Mohammed Anwar Pervez OBE, HPk (; born 15 March 1935) is a Pakistani-born British billionaire businessman and former bus conductor and driver. He is the founder and chairman of Bestway Group.
According to the Sunday Times Rich List, in 2020 Anwar Pervez's net worth was £3.1 billion; which made him the richest Pakistan-born Briton in the UK. The 2021 list gave his family's assets as £1.364 billion, placing them 125th on the list.
Early life
Mohammed Anwar Pervez was born on 15 March 1935 to a subsistence farming family in Rawalpindi, then under British rule. He did his matriculation in Pakistan. He studied at Forman Christian College. In 1951, he moved to the UK at the age of 16.
Career
His first job was as a telephone operator in the state-owned telecommunication company PTCL. There he used to work for a month and most of them were spent on anti-malaria medications.
In 1951, he emigrated to England. There he became a bus conductor and driver in Bradford. He worked seven days a week on double shifts for about - a week.
In 1963, he established his first convenience store, Kashmir, in London's Earls Court for the Muslim community. By the early seventies, he had changed the company's name to Bestway and was operating ten convenience stores in and around West London, mostly serving Asians, and specialised in Asian food.
In 1976, Pervez opened Bestway's first wholesale warehouse in Acton, West London. The company has since grown to a multibillion-pound enterprise, and Bestway is the second-largest independent wholesaler in the UK. In 2014, his group bought 774 pharmacies from The Co-operative Group for £620 million.
Personal life
He was married to second wife Sabiha Qasim with whom he had four children. A son from his first marriage and another from his second are directors of Bestway.
In 2012, their daughter Farah married Syed Abid Hussain Imam, the son of Pakistani politicians Abida Hussain and Fakhar Imam. She lives in Lahore and is not involved in Bestway.
Honours
Pervez was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1992 and a Knight Bachelor in 1999.
In March 2000, he was awarded Hilal-i-Pakistan by the Pakistani Government for his services to Pakistan.