Age 45
Position Chief executive, Booker Group
Salary £510,000
Charles Wilson must relish proving the doubters wrong. In a parched retail landscape, Britain’s biggest cash-and-carry chain is positively overflowing. Yesterday Mr Wilson, who saved the business from extinction 13 years ago, reported that sales at Booker rose 6.2 per cent to £3.6 billion in the year to March 25 — helped by fresh fruit and vegetables, which rose 52 per cent in the fourth quarter.
Mr Wilson started his career at Procter & Gamble in 1986 after leaving Durham University with a first class degree. He was headhunted by OC&C Strategy Consultants, leaving after four years to help to found Abberton Associates, another consulting business. It was while working as a management consultant in 1997 that he met his most famous ally Sir Stuart Rose. The pair worked on the demerger of Burton Group into Arcadia and Debenhams, selling Arcadia on to Sir Philip Green.
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Over their ten-year partnership Mr Wilson became the M&S chief executive’s right-hand man. They rescued Booker from insolvency in 1998, selling it to Iceland. Sir Stuart brought his protégé into the fold while turning around M&S in 2004, putting him in charge of strategy.
Yet Mr Wilson’s affection for the troubled wholesaler endured. His shock defection to the distinctly unfashionable Booker less than two years later stunned the City, although his arrival was undoubtedly made smoother by the £887,000 golden hello from Baugur, the Icelandic investor that had taken the business private nine months earlier.
The gamble paid off. After cutting debt and expanding into India, Mr Wilson’s 7 per cent stake in Booker — which in addition to its core customers of corner shops and caterers also supplies M&S — is now estimated at £65.4 million.