A BILLIONAIRE boss has turned 74 of his employees into millionaires as part of a massive share give away.
Matt Moulding, the founder of Manchester-based The Hut Group (THG), says around 430 staff have been gifted a £1billion worth of shares.
The 48-year-old from Colne, Lancashire, began his working life washing dishes and was expelled from college for playing truant and became a factory hand.
He then started out selling CDs online before starting to run websites for other retailers.
But now his online beauty and nutrition retailer – which includes brands such as MyProtein and Lookfantastic – is estimated to be worth around £5 billion.
The company has rewarded employees including secretaries and warehouse staff with huge payouts from free shares over the last decade.
“We have created more millionaires than any other company in British corporate history,” he told the Mirror.
“The shares are 100 per cent gifted, no-one has had to pay anything. We have genuinely changed so many lives.”
Those who’ve hit the jackpot range from managers through to drivers and admin staff – but the number is set to rise as £175million of shares have yet to be handed out.
THG is a global retail powerhouse and sells its own beauty and health products through 200 websites.
It also licenses technology to giants such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola.
Employees had been awarded more than a fifth of the company’s shares since it was founded in 2004.
Moulding himself landed a massive £830million after his firm was launched on the stock market in September which he uses to fund a jet-set lifestyle.
As a result Moulding and his family are already worth £960m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
The Burnley FC supporting father-of-four is a self-confessed workaholic and manages his empire almost exclusively on his mobile phone.
Moulding works huge hours fuelled by 20 shots of coffee but doesn’t let his gruelling workload get in the way of his gym sessions.
He has given £10million of his fortune to support Covid relief efforts and donated £2million of PPE to frontline workers on top of that.