Who Owns Victoria's Secret?

Victoria’s Secret is owned by Victoria’s Secret & Co., a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange with no controlling shareholder since it was spun off from L Brands in 2021. In Britain the answer is different: the UK and Ireland business is a joint venture that Next plc controls with 51%, formed after the UK arm collapsed into administration in 2020. Every Companies House company bearing the name is dissolved. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Victoria Secret today?

Victoria’s Secret & Co. owns the brand worldwide. It is a public company, owned by its shareholders, with no parent and no controlling holder.

Who owns the shops on British high streets is a separate question with a different answer. Those are run by a joint venture in which Next plc — the Leicester-based retailer — holds 51% and Victoria’s Secret holds 49%.

So a Victoria’s Secret store in Britain is majority-owned by a British company, and the American brand owner is the minority partner in it.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

Victoria’s Secret & Co. is the ultimate parent of the brand and nothing sits above it. It has been independent only since August 2021; before that it was a division of L Brands, alongside Bath & Body Works.

The UK structure is a genuine joint venture rather than a franchise or a licence. Next operates the stores and the UK website, uses its own logistics and holds the majority — the arrangement Next has used repeatedly to take on brands whose British operations have failed.

Control and brand ownership therefore sit in different places, and neither party can act alone: Next cannot change the brand, and Victoria’s Secret cannot run the British shops.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

No individual controls Victoria’s Secret & Co. Its largest holders are institutional — index managers and active funds — and it has a single class of common stock, so votes track shares. There is no founder class, no family block and no dual-class structure of the kind Nike and Alphabet use.

That is a change from its history. Leslie Wexner, who built The Limited into L Brands and ran it for more than fifty years, was for decades the dominant shareholder and the decisive voice. He stepped down as chairman and chief executive in 2020, and the 2021 spin-off completed the separation. No comparable holder replaced him.

On the British side, control is straightforward and documented: Next holds the majority of the joint venture.

Official records and evidence

Companies House establishes nothing about who owns Victoria’s Secret, and the register is unusually treacherous here.

Every company on the register bearing the name is dissolved. Victoria’s Secret Limited (02468671) dissolved in 2010; Victoria’s Secret UK Limited (07279467) dissolved 23 November 2022; Victoria’s Secret Global Limited (09841586) in 2017; Victoria’s Secret Beauty and Victoria’s Secret UK II earlier still.

Worse, several companies once used the name and now trade as something else entirely. Silver Paper Ltd was Victoria’s Secret Home; Spartan Property Solutions Ltd was Victoria’s Secret (UK); Avant Premier Limited was Victoria’s Secret (London); Grande Designs Limited was Victoria’s Secret (International). None had any connection to the American company, and all were dissolved.

This is the clearest illustration on the site of a rule that holds everywhere: a company name on Companies House establishes nothing about ownership of a brand. Anyone may register a name that is free, and names are released and reused constantly.

The real evidence is elsewhere: Victoria’s Secret & Co.’s SEC filings for the parent, and Next plc’s own market disclosures for the 51% joint venture.

Ownership history and changes

Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 in California by Roy Raymond, who sold it to Leslie Wexner‘s The Limited in 1982 for a reported sum in the low millions — before the brand became worth billions under its new owner.

• 1982 — bought by The Limited, later renamed L Brands.
• June 2020 — the UK arm enters administration after its stores close during the pandemic.
• Late 2020 — L Brands and Next plc form the joint venture, Next taking 51%; the UK stores are saved and the online business folds in during 2021.
• August 2021 — Victoria’s Secret is spun off from L Brands as a separately listed company. L Brands renames itself Bath & Body Works.

The 2022 dissolution of Victoria’s Secret UK Limited is the administration’s formal conclusion, appearing on the register two years after the business itself had already passed to the joint venture.

Related companies and brands

Victoria’s Secret & Co. owns Pink and Adore Me, which it acquired in 2022.

Bath & Body Works is not in the group. It is the former parent under a new name, and the two are now entirely separate listed companies — a case where the parent kept the sibling’s business and the subsidiary left, which is the reverse of how spin-offs are usually described.

On the British side, Victoria’s Secret sits alongside Next’s other partner brands. Next owns Reiss, FatFace and Joules outright and holds stakes in others — the pattern of a retailer that has repeatedly bought or backed brands whose own companies failed, and one worth knowing before assuming a shop on a British high street is owned by the name above the door.