Anders Holch Povlsen, worth almost £5billion, is the owner of the international fashion business Bestseller and the biggest shareholder in the British online fashion company ASOS.
He is also Scotland’s biggest landowner, where he owns over 200,000 acres across 11 estates.
It is all a long way from the tiny Danish town of Brande, with a population of just 7,000, where Povlsen’s father, Troels, opened the family’s first clothes store in 1975.
Anders Holch Povlsen owns brands such as Jack & Jones and Vero Moda, and 27% of ASOS.com, Britain’s biggest internet fashion retailer. He and his wife, Anne (above together), tragically lost three of his children – Alfred, five, Agnes, 12, and Alma, 15 – in the Sri Lanka terrorist attacks in April last year
Other outlets soon followed. And Anders was only 27 when Troels made him the sole owner of Bestseller.
By 2007, it was so successful that supermodel Gisele Bundchen was hired to promote it.
Partial to a single malt and locally brewed real ale, he is known to visit local pubs in Scotland but rarely says much about himself.
Bestseller employs 15,000 people and boasts nearly 6,000 shops.
He owns brands such as Jack & Jones and Vero Moda, and 27 per cent of ASOS.com, Britain’s biggest internet fashion retailer.
Mr Povlsen has bought 11 Scottish estates (pictured as of 2016)
Although he lives in Denmark, he regularly travels to Scotland on holiday and has repeatedly stated his love for the country’s scenery.
He and his wife, Anne, tragically lost three of his children – Alfred, five, Agnes, 12, and Alma, 15 – in the Sri Lanka terrorist attacks in April last year.
The children were among 253 victims killed in a series of church and hotel explosions on Easter Sunday.
Only their youngest daughter, Astrid, then ten, survived the attacks and the couple said that they remain ‘genuinely grateful’ that she is still alive.
ASOS billionaire is locked in row over plans for a tourist village with its own restaurant, bakehouse, shop, hotel and microbrewery in remote part of the Scottish Highlands
Anders Holch Povlsen has been locked in a row over plans to create a tourist resort in an idyllic and remote part of the Scottish Highlands, it was reported in February.
He wants to build the development in a village off an iconic Scottish tourist route known as the North Coast 500.
The Danish tycoon hopes to build a tourist resort in the Scottish Highlands that would include a restaurant, bakehouse, stonecutters, shop, a hotel and a microbrewery
His plans for a tourist hotspot in the Highlands have been slammed by rival hotel owners, who say it will affect their business and deprive them of trade.
Under the plans submitted last December, the tourist attraction would be located in Tongue, a village off the North Coast 500.
If approved, the project would include a restaurant, bakehouse, stonecutters, shop, events space, a hotel and a microbrewery.