Who Owns Next?

Next has no owner. NEXT plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with no controlling shareholder — the largest holders are index managers holding for their funds’ investors. Companies House holds the most tangled name swap found on this site: the company that was NEXT PLC is now NEXT HOLDINGS LIMITED (00035161, incorporated 11 November 1891), and a company registered in 2002 carries the name today. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Next today?

Next is owned by its shareholders. No person, family or company controls it, and no holder is near the 25% at which UK rules record significant control.

Two companies share a Leicester address and a tangle of names:

• NEXT PLC (04412362), incorporated 9 April 2002 — previously named NEXT GROUP PLC. This is the listed company.
• NEXT HOLDINGS LIMITED (00035161), incorporated 11 November 1891 — previously named NEXT PLC, and before that NEXT GROUP PLC.

Read that carefully. Both companies have been called NEXT GROUP PLC, and the name NEXT PLC moved from the 1891 company to the 2002 one. This is the twelfth name swap or reuse documented on this site, and the most confusing: any document mentioning “Next plc” or “Next Group plc” is ambiguous without a date and a company number.

As a listed company, NEXT plc is exempt from the PSC regime, so Companies House holds no ownership record for it.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

NEXT plc is the ultimate parent, with the operating companies beneath it — retail, online, and the finance arm that runs the Next credit account.

The 1891 company number is the thread back to the beginning. Next descends from J. Hepworth & Son, a Leeds gentlemen’s tailor, and 00035161 is that business’s registration. A fashion retailer known for a brand created in 1982 is legally continuous with a Victorian tailoring company — the register keeps the receipt even when the name, the products and the customers have all changed.

Next’s structure has an unusual feature for a clothing retailer: it operates a credit business of real scale alongside the shops, and it runs Total Platform, a service selling its warehousing, delivery and website infrastructure to other brands. Several labels a shopper thinks of as independent are run on Next’s systems.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

No individual controls Next. Its largest holders are the index managers and institutional investors, each holding a few percent on behalf of the investors in their funds — the same position as Tesco, BT, BP and Kingfisher elsewhere on this site.

Lord Wolfson — Simon Wolfson, chief executive since 2001 and one of the longest-serving bosses in the FTSE 100 — holds shares but nothing approaching control. His father, Lord Wolfson of Sunningdale, chaired the company before him, but Next is not and never has been a family-controlled business in the sense that JCB or bet365 are.

None of this appears on Companies House, because listed companies file no PSC register.

Official records and evidence

Both company numbers, the 1891 and 2002 incorporations and every previous name above are Companies House records and can be checked directly.

The ownership is not. Next’s shareholders are disclosed through major holdings notifications to the London Stock Exchange and the annual report, and every percentage is a snapshot from a filing date.

Searching the register for “Next” is close to useless — nearly 9,000 companies match, the great majority unrelated businesses using an ordinary English word. This is the same problem the site records for Kick, Misfits and Sky: a common-word brand is unfindable by name, and only the number works.

Companies House does not verify most filed information.

Ownership history and changes

The business began in Leeds in 1864 as J. Hepworth & Son, tailors, and was registered as a company in 1891.

• 1981 — Hepworth buys Kendalls, a womenswear chain, to gain high street sites.
• 1982 — those shops are relaunched as Next; the group later takes the name.
• 1988 — acquires the Grattan catalogue business, the foundation of the Next Directory and of the modern online operation.
• 2001 — Simon Wolfson becomes chief executive.
• 2002 — the current NEXT PLC is incorporated, and the names shuffle between the two companies.

Next has never been taken over and has had no change of control. What it has done is acquire — and it has become, quietly, one of the more acquisitive companies in British retail.

Related companies and brands

Next owns Reiss, FatFace, Joules and Cath Kidston, and holds 51% of the joint venture running Victoria’s Secret in the UK and Ireland — covered separately on this site, and the clearest case of Next controlling a brand most shoppers assume is American.

It also runs other labels through Total Platform without owning them, which is a genuinely different relationship: Next provides the warehouse, the website and the delivery, and the brand keeps its own owner.

So there are three tiers, and telling them apart is the whole difficulty: brands Next owns (Reiss, FatFace, Joules), brands it part-owns (Victoria’s Secret UK), and brands it merely operates for. From the customer’s side all three look identical — the parcel arrives in the same van.

Next is not connected to Marks & Spencer, Primark (Associated British Foods) or boohoo, now Debenhams Group, all separately owned and covered elsewhere on this site.