Seventy-three year-old South African Christo Wiese has expanded his empire with an agreement to buy New Look, the discount women’s clothing retailer, for £780m (R14.2bn).
Wiese’s Brait SE investment firm already owned a stake in the Iceland chain of frozen-food stores and last month signed a deal to buy UK health-club operator Virgin Active for $1bn (R12bn).
For Wiese, a native of the Northern Cape Province, the move into the UK is the latest step in a decades-long retail career. He began working at discounter Pep Stores and, after an interlude in diamond mining, returned as chairperson in 1980. Last year he agreed to sell the business for $5.7bn (R62.8bn) – which he celebrated with a barbecue – and is now buying retailers in British towns and cities.
“I still enjoy what I’m doing which is building businesses,” Wiese said in an interview last month. “I don’t play golf. I don’t have any particular passion apart from my business and my family and that gives me all the pleasure that I want.”
Brait is a publicly traded investment firm in which Wiese is the largest shareholder, with 35% of the shares and a seat on the board. He’s South Africa’s fourth-richest man, with a fortune of about $7.1bn, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
