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Zuber and Mohsin Issa


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2020 is sure to be marked as a transformational year for Mohsin and Zuber Issa, as they made their entry into the big league of the UK retail agreeing to buy a majority stake in the country’s no 3 supermarket chain Asda in October.

Later that month, the brothers were awarded with CBE in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

The £6.8 billion deal, in partnership with private equity group TDR Capital, will enable the Blackburn-based brothers to take Asda back under British ownership for the first time since 1999, when Walmart paid £6.7bn for the business. The Issas plan to invest more than £1bn in the next three years in Asda to keep prices low and to protect its supply chains.

“After a successful period as part of Walmart, we are looking forward to helping Asda build a differentiated business that will continue to serve customers brilliantly in communities across the UK,” they say.

The Indian-origin brothers are known for the fast-expanding forecourt operator EG Group, which now runs almost 6,000 sites across three continents. Initially called Euro Garages, the Issa brothers founded the group in 2001, acquiring a single petrol filling station in Bury, Greater Manchester.

Their parents came to the UK from Gujarat, India, in the 1960s. They attended their local comprehensive school in Blackburn and began their careers working in their father’s local petrol station.

Big ticket acquisitions are not new for the enterprising brothers. They branched out across the pond and Down Under in 2018, by acquiring 762 convenience stores from Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US, and the petrol business of Woolworths Group, Australia’s no 1 retailer. They have since expanded the US network to over 1,700 stores across the country, operating in 33 states and retailing more than 2.5 billion gallons

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