WG Galen Weston, the entrepreneur and philanthropist who built an international food, retail and real estate empire including Selfridges Group and Weston Foods, has died aged 80.
He died on Monday “peacefully at home after a long illness faced with courage and dignity”, the Weston family said in a statement.
“In our business and in his life he built a legacy of extraordinary accomplishment and joy,” his son, Galen G Weston, chief executive of George Weston Limited, said.
Alannah Weston, his daughter and chairwoman of Selfridges Group, which Weston acquired in 2003, said he was “a great visionary”, adding: “His energy electrified those of us who were lucky enough to work alongside him to reimagine what customer experience could be.”
Willard Gordon Galen Weston was born in Buckinghamshire in 1940, the youngest of nine children. His father helped expand the family’s bakery company into a multinational food empire and served as an MP.
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A friend of Prince Charles and a lover of polo and art, Weston oversaw and expanded a high-end family retail empire that includes Canada’s Holt Renfrew, Brown Thomas in Ireland and De Bijenkorf of the Netherlands. Through George Weston, the company named after his grandfather, the family holds the biggest stake in Canada’s largest food retailer, Loblaw.
Weston had a net worth of $10.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Since his retirement, he had remained a part of his family’s philanthropic endeavours, including the Weston Family Foundation and the Weston Brain Institute.
He and his wife Hilary, a former lieutenant governor of Ontario, Canada, had been married for 55 years.
His brother Garry Weston, who died in 2002, was chairman of Associated British Foods.