Anders Holch Povlsen: the Danish tycoon reshaping Britain

The fashion brand Topshop, former flagship of the toppled UK high-street king Philip Green, has acquired a new “Scandinavian wardrobe”, says The Herald (Scotland). It has just been bought from Asos by Heartland, the investment company owned by Anders Holch Povlsen – the billionaire Danish rag-trader who has the singular claim of being both Denmark’s and Scotland’s richest person. 

He appears to have picked up a bargain. The once high-flying Asos bought the Topshop and Topman brands from Green in 2021, in a package worth £235 million. Povlsen has paid just £135 million for a 75% stake. Still, as a 28% shareholder in Asos, he might argue he had little choice. 

Shares in the online retailer have plummeted by more than 90% from their height in 2021. This deal will help keep it afloat. Asos reportedly turned down a higher offer from Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion giant, notes This is Money. A case, perhaps, of sticking with the nurse for fear of finding something worse. 

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Topshop certainly joins a thriving stable. The sole owner of the international clothes retailer Bestseller – founded in 1975 by his parents, Troels and Merete, in the small Danish town of Ringkøbing – Povlsen was just 28 when his father handed over the business. At 51, he now presides over a growing roster of brands, including Jack & Jones and Vero Moda, and is also a major stakeholder in the German firm Zalando and the Klarna payments service. 

Still, in Britain he is probably best known as “Scotland’s biggest private landowner”, having amassed vast estates in the Highlands, says the BBC. “Like hundreds of thousands of other tourists”, Povlsen was “captivated by its rugged beauty” when he visited for an angling holiday with his parents in the 1980s. Two decades later, he returned – this time “wielding his chequebook rather than a fishing rod” – and bought the Glenfeshie Estate in the Cairngorms for £8 million. 

It was the start of a buying spree that took in “huge swathes of the Scottish countryside”. By 2019, Povlsen and his wife Anne owned about 220,000 acres across 12 estates, stretching across Sutherland and the Grampian Mountains. Their lives changed forever in April 2018. During a holiday to Sri Lanka, three of the couple’s four children were killed in terror attacks targeting churches and luxury hotels in the country. The couple later “thanked the people of Scotland for their support” – a rare statement from a “private” tycoon who “rarely gives interviews”, says The Scotsman. 

Povlsen’s silence hasn’t always stood him in good stead. Although his Scottish land company, Wildland, has invested heavily in “rewilding schemes” and tourism – the Povlsens see themselves as “custodians” and aim to restore peatlands and wetlands, and reintroduce wolves and lynx to their ancient habitats – their efforts have met with opposition in some quarters. Locals complain that livelihoods have been compromised and communities hollowed out. Questions have also been aired about the ethics of financing a sustainability dream with profits from non-eco-friendly fast fashion.

Will Anders Holch Povlsen revive Topshop?

As well as his Highland estates, Povlsen also owns the historic Jenners building on Edinburgh’s Princes Street – once one of the world’s oldest department stores – and has plans to transform it into a shopping destination, with food and drink outlets and a “boutique hotel”. That’s where Topshop might come in handy, says The Herald. As Susannah Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown points out: “This Scandi makeover could potentially herald a much bigger return of Topshop and Topman to bricks-and-mortar stores around the world” – a dream Philip Green never realised. Somewhere in Monaco, the former Topshop boss must be spinning on his yacht.

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