Sir Mohammed Anwar Pervez OBE,

HPk Hämeenlinnan Pallokerho (HPK) is a professional ice hockey team in the Liiga, the top men's ice hockey league in Finland. Their home ice is the Ritari-areena in Hämeenlinna. HPK was established in 1929. The parent club of the team is HPK Edu ...

( ur, سر انور پرویز; born 15 March 1935) is a Pakistani-born British billionaire businessman and former bus conductor and driver. He is the founder and chairman of

Bestway Group Bestway Group is a British Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate company based in London, England. It has its operations in United Kingdom and Pakistan. The group owns the UK's second-largest wholesaler serving 125,000 independe ...

. According to the ''

Sunday Times Rich List The ''Sunday Times Rich List'' is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families resident in the United Kingdom ranked by net wealth. The list is updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday news ...

'', in 2020 Anwar Pervez's net worth was £3.1 billion (US$3.75 billion); which made him the richest Pakistan-born Briton in the UK. The 2021 list gave his family's assets as £1.364 billion, placing them 125th on the list.

Early life

Mohammed Anwar Pervez was born on 15 March 1935 to a subsistence farming family in

Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...

. He did his matriculation in Pakistan. He studied at

Forman Christian College Forman Christian College is an private liberal arts university in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. It was founded in 1864 and is administered by the Presbyterian Church. The university follows an American-style curriculum. Founded in 1864 by American ...

. In 1956, he moved to the UK at the age of 21.

Career

His first job was as a telephone operator in the state-owned telecommunication company

PTCL Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd., commonly known as PTCL ( ur, ) is the national telecommunication company in Pakistan. There he used to work for a month and most of them were spent on anti-malaria medications. In 1956, he emigrated to England. There he became a bus conductor and driver in

Bradford Bradford is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Bradford district in West Yorkshire, England. The city is in the Pennines' eastern foothills on the banks of the Bradford Beck. Bradford had a population of 349,561 at the 2011 ...

. He worked seven days a week on double shifts about to a week. In 1963 he established his first convenience store, Kashmir, in London's Earls Court for the Muslim community. By the early seventies, he had changed the company's name to Bestway and was operating ten convenience stores in and around West London mostly serving Asians and specialised in Asian food: spices, rice, lentils, and meat. In 1976, Pervez opened Bestway’s first wholesale warehouse in Acton, West London. The company has since grown to a multibillion-pound enterprise, and Bestway is the second-largest independent wholesaler in the UK.

Personal life

He was married to second wife Sabiha Qasim with whom he had Suleiman Pervez, Dawood Pervez and Farah Pervez. Rizwan Pervez was from his first marriage. Both Rizwan and Dawood are directors of Bestway. In 2012, their daughter Farah married Syed Abid Hussain Imam, the son of Pakistani politicians

Abida Hussain Syeda Abida Hussain–Imam ( b. 1948) is a Pakistani conservative politician, diplomat, and socialite on the platform of the Pakistan Muslim League (N). Born into a feudal family in Pakistan, she served as the Pakistan Ambassador to the ...

and

Fakhar Imam Syed Fakhar Imam ( ur, سید فخر امام) (born 18 December 1942) is a Pakistani politician who served as Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, from April 2020 to April 2022. He also served as the 11th Speaker of Natio ...

. She lives in

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...

and is not involved in Bestway.

Honours

Pervez was made an

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

in 1992 and a

Knight Bachelor The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are the ...

in 1999. In March 2000, he was awarded

Hilal-i-Pakistan The Pakistan Civil Awards were established on March 19, 1957, following the proclamation of Pakistan as an independent republic on March 23, 1956. The announcement of civil awards is generally made once a year on Independence Day, August 14, an ...

by the Pakistani Government for his services to the Pakistani nation.

References

External links