Who Owns Selfridges?

Selfridges is owned by Thailand’s Central Group and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — 60% and 40% respectively since October 2024. It was bought from the Weston family in 2022 by Central and Austria’s Signa; Signa then collapsed, and PIF took its stake. The store on Oxford Street is run by a company incorporated in 1908, the year before it opened. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns the Selfridges brand?

The trading company is SELFRIDGES RETAIL LIMITED (00097117), incorporated 5 March 1908 and registered at 400 Oxford Street — the address of the shop Harry Gordon Selfridge opened in 1909. Its person with significant control is Selfridges & Co. Limited (03505859).

Above them, the group is held through Selfridges Group Holdings Limited, registered in Jersey and recorded at Companies House only as an overseas company with a UK establishment opened on 31 October 2025. Jersey companies do not file PSC information here, so the UK register does not name the owners.

Parent company and ultimate owner

The owners are two very different institutions:

• Central Group — the Thai retail conglomerate controlled by the Chirathivat family, holding 60%
• Public Investment Fund — Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, holding 40%

Both the operating company and the property company are held on that split. The property side matters more than it sounds: the Oxford Street building is among the most valuable retail freeholds in Europe, and the group was structured to separate the shops from the real estate.

PIF appears elsewhere on this site as the owner of Newcastle United, where it is named directly on the register in the unusual legal form Corporation Sole. Here it is not named at all, because the holding structure sits in Jersey.

Brand owner vs operating company

Selfridges Retail Limited runs the shops. Selfridges Properties Limited (04969613) and the Jersey holding companies hold the buildings and the group interests, and there are separate companies for the Manchester stores and for financing.

That split is why the 2023 crisis was survivable. When Signa failed, the pressure fell on the holding and financing structure rather than on the shops themselves, and the operating business was recapitalised through a debt-for-equity arrangement that diluted Signa before PIF replaced it.

When the ownership changed

Selfridges has changed hands four times in twenty-five years:

• 2003 — bought by Galen Weston for a reported £598m, ending its life as a listed company.
• August 2022 — sold by the Weston family to Central Group and Signa Holding, at a reported £4bn.
• November 2023 — Signa’s collapse; Central took majority control of the operating company through a reported £317m debt-for-equity deal.
• October 2024 — PIF acquired Signa’s entire stake, settling the present 60/40 split with Central.

The Weston connection links this page to another on this site. The same family — through Wittington Investments — controls Associated British Foods and therefore Primark, and still owns Fortnum & Mason. For nineteen years the family that owns Britain’s largest value clothing chain also owned its most famous luxury department store.

Related brands in the same group

Selfridges Group also includes Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland, and previously de Bijenkorf in the Netherlands and Holt Renfrew in Canada, which were separated during the changes of ownership.

Central Group’s wider portfolio spans department stores across Europe and Asia, including stakes in Rinascente in Italy, Illum in Denmark and KaDeWe in Germany — the last of which it also came to control after Signa’s collapse.

Selfridges has no connection to Harrods, owned by Qatar’s sovereign fund, or to John Lewis, owned by its employees. All three are frequently grouped together and none shares an owner.

Sources and verification

The UK company numbers, the 1908 incorporation, the PSC entry and the Jersey holding company’s registration as an overseas company are from the Companies House register.

The 60/40 split and the transaction history are not register-verified: the controlling structure is Jersey-registered and files no PSC information in the UK, so the ownership comes from Central Group’s and Selfridges’ own announcements and from reporting of the Signa collapse. The £598m, £4bn and £317m figures are reported rather than filed. Companies House does not verify most filed information.