Photo: Melissa Hillier / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
Nationality: Pakistani American
Born: July 18, 1950
Age: 69 years
Born Place: Lahore
Gender: Male
Spouse: Ann Carlson Khan (m. 1977)
Known for:
- Principal owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham F.C.
- Owner of Flex-N-Gate
- Owner of All Elite Wrestling
Net Worth : US$8 billion (July 2020)
BIOGRAPHY
Shahid Rafiq Khan (Urdu: شاہد خان; born July 18, 1950), is a Pakistani-born American billionaire businessman and sports tycoon. Khan is the owner of Flex-N-Gate an American automotive company and OEM which is ranked by Automotive News as 7th largest American automotive parts supplier generating US$ 8.3 billion in revenue in 2018. Khan is the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL), Fulham F.C. of the English Football League Championship, and professional wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW) where he is lead investor.
In June 2020 Khan was the second richest NFL owner with net worth of $11.8 billion after David Tepper (Carolina Panthers) who had a net worth of $12 billion. Khan was featured on the front cover of Forbes magazine in 2012, associating him as the face of the American Dream. As of July 2020, Khan’s personal net worth is $8 billion. In 2019, he ranked 61st in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, and as of July 2020 234th richest person in the world. He is also the richest person of Pakistani origin.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Khan was born in Lahore, Pakistan, to a middle-class family involved in the construction industry. His mother (now retired) was a professor of mathematics. He moved to the United States in 1967 at age 16 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. When he went to the United States, he spent his first night in a $2/night room at the University YMCA, and his first job was washing dishes for $1.20 an hour. He joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the school. He graduated from the UIUC College of Engineering with a BSc in Industrial Engineering in 1971. He later was awarded the Mechanical Science and Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999.
Business career
Flex-N-Gate
Khan worked at the automotive manufacturing company Flex-N-Gate Corporation while attending the University of Illinois. When he graduated he was hired as the engineering director for the company. In 1978, he started Bumper Works, which made car bumpers for customized pickup trucks and body shop repairs. The transaction involved a $50,000 loan from the Small Business Administration and $16,000 of his savings.
In 1980, he bought Flex-N-Gate from his former employer Charles Gleason Butzow, bringing Bumper Works into the fold. Khan grew the company so that it supplied bumpers for the Big Three automakers. In 1984, he began supplying a small number of bumpers for Toyota pickups. By 1987 it was the sole supplier for Toyota pickups and by 1989 it was the sole supplier for the entire Toyota line in the United States. Adopting The Toyota Way increased company efficiency and ability to change its manufacturing process within a few minutes. Since then, the company has grown from $17 million in sales to an estimated $2 billion in 2010.
By 2011, Flex-N-Gate had 12,450 employees and 48 manufacturing plants in the United States and several other countries and in 2018 had a revenue of $8.3 billion and was ranked as the 49th largest private USA company by Forbes. It is also ranked by Automotive News as 7th largest American automotive parts supplier and overall 33rd largest supplier in the world.
In May 2012, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Flex-N-Gate $57,000 for health violations at its Urbana plant. Before the 2012 NFL Draft, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other environmentalist groups organized a campaign for several accusations against Flex-N-Gate and Khan.
PERSONAL LIFE
Khan is a Muslim. Khan met Ann Carlson (now Ann Carlson Khan) at college in 1967 and dated her for ten years before they married in 1977. They have two children together, with a daughter Shanna Khan and a son Tony Khan born in 1982. Khan became a naturalized American citizen in 1991. Khan, a Republican, spoke out against President Trump’s immigration ban. Khan owns a house in Naples, Florida.
AWARDS AND HONOURS
Khan has received a number of awards from the University of Illinois, including a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999 from the Department of Mechanical Science and Industrial Engineering, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Service in 2006 from the College of Engineering, and (with his wife, Ann Carlson) the Distinguished Service Award in 2005 from the University of Illinois Alumni Association.
The contents of this page are sourced from Wikipedia article on 4 July 2020. The contents are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
