American retail giant Walmart today confirmed its supermarket chain Asda is to be sold to two brothers from Blackburn in a deal worth £6.8bn.
It follows reports last week that EG Group - in a consortium with private equity firm TDR Capital - was in 'pole position' to take over the multiple.
But who are the brothers behind EG Group?
Mohsin and Zuber Issa built up their fortune from a single petrol filling station in Bury, Greater Manchester, that according to Wikipedia, was bought for £150,000.
Their Euro Garages brand, founded in 2001, has since established itself as one of the UK’s fastest growing and most recognisable forecourt operators, with an expanding portfolio of around 4500 sites across the UK, mainland Europe, the USA and Australia.
They have been named widely as the preferred bidders to buy ASDA from US-based Walmart in a £6.5million deal with their EG Group’s private equity firm partner TDR Capital.
Born in Blackburn, the siblings' father came to the UK from Gujarat, India to find work in the textile industry. Lancs Live reports that they first worked in a garage with their father after he left the woollen industry.
Now, the pair have a net worth of £3.56 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, 2020.
The brothers have recently been diversifying their business interests. In February, they set up Monte Hotels Ltd and in September 2019 bought the Stanley House hotel and spa in Mellor.
In March this year, the EG Group acquired one of the largest KFC franchise in the UK & Ireland from Belfast-headquartered, The Herbert Group.
The acquisition included 146 KFC restaurants and one Pizza Hut store, taking EG Group's food-to-go retail concession to more than 1,500 across ten international markets including the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Germany, US and Australia.
They have invested £100million in Frontier Park business estate on the Blackburn/Hyndburn border including a Hampton by Hilton hotel.
The company – headquartered in a new £35m building off Blackburn’s Haslingden Road – merged with private equity firm TDR Capital’s European Forecourt Retail Group in 2016 to create the EG Group as it moved into Europe and the US.
In 2019 the business reported revenues of more than £17.9bn. TDR Capital now owns half of the group, with Zuber and Mohsin each owning 25 per cent.
