The Issa brothers built an empire. Now a wedge is driving them apart
On the evening of November 1, 2018 the Issa brothers donned their tuxedos and headed out to EY’s entrepreneur of the year awards. After collecting their trophy, Mohsin, 52, and Zuber, 51, the billionaire owners of Asda and petrol forecourt empire EG Group, were photographed beaming from ear to ear. Between them stood Victoria Price, a partner at the big four accountancy firm, who looked every bit as elated as the brothers themselves.
Back then, none of them could have imagined how entwined their lives would become. Last Friday, amid a media clamour, Mohsin and Price confirmed they were now a couple. Mohsin’s decision to leave his wife and enter into a relationship with Price has been traumatic for the tight-knit Issa family, with a wedge said to have been driven between two of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs.
“It’s been a sensitive situation. The brothers’ wives are very good friends,” a source said. “Family-run businesses have a different chemistry, and the breakdown in relations between the brothers has made the business side of things more difficult.”
The revelations also pose uncomfortable questions for EY, which resigned as Asda’s auditor a day before Price left the firm in July. Price, 41, is understood to have acted as Mohsin’s tax adviser during her time at EY.
Sources close to Mohsin and Zuber play down the idea that a schism has opened up between them, and insist that the brothers remain a unified force.
However, the Issas have undeniably been through a turbulent time — riddled with financial pressures on their empire, uncomfortable political scrutiny and profound personal challenges. And that has raised questions over whether they both have the desire to remain in the driving seats of a retail empire employing 200,000 people across ten countries.
While Mohsin puts in six-and-a-half-day weeks trying to turn around Asda’s underwhelming performance, Zuber, who runs EG Group and has overseen a spate of ambitious and sometimes controversial developments in the brothers’ native Blackburn, is thought to be eyeing up his next chapter.
Zuber Issa is thought to have been trying to figure out a way of selling his stake – around a fifth – of Asda as he seeks to work on other projects.
Could it be that we are witnessing the beginning of the end for one of the most powerful entrepreneurial double acts of this century?
The brothers’ parents, Vali and Zubeda, arrived in the UK from Gujarat, India, in the 1970s and raised their sons in a cramped terraced house near the centre of Blackburn. Vali worked in the rag trade and the building industry before buying a petrol station, where he put his teenage sons to work.
Both were unremarkable students. When Ilyas Munshi, a key lieutenant at EG, gave a talk at Mohsin’s former school, the headmistress showed him Mohsin’s woeful school reports, which called out his “very poor” attendance.
Yet both brothers possessed a fierce work ethic — and burning ambition. Zuber purchased his first petrol station in 2001. “We were on our way back from holiday in Malaysia and we stopped off in Bury to see this site [a petrol station],” Zuber’s wife Asma told the BBC in 2021. “Zuber told me, ‘Oh, I’ve just bought this.’ ”
Mohsin came on board after a few years and the brothers’ “light-bulb moment” came when they renovated the site. They realised that by sprucing up the convenience stores and, in time, adding cafés and restaurants, they could turn a once-dreary forecourt into a destination in its own right.
The steady expansion of their business went stratospheric after they teamed up with private equity firm TDR Capital in 2015. On the back of a series of debt-fuelled deals in an era of cheap money, EG grew more than tenfold in just four years. As their wealth swelled, the brothers began to lavish it on their home town.
In 2021, they opened Frontier Park — a £100 million development spanning a 152-room Hilton hotel, a roadside service station and warehouses — in the single-biggest investment ever made in the borough. Now, the brothers are bankrolling the development of a huge mosque — dubbed Blackburn’s answer to Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia — and, just up the road, they have bought and demolished a row of eight period houses.
In their place, they are building five identical hilltop mansions, with spectacular countryside views over Bowland Fells. The imposing properties — each boasting an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi and cinema — will soon be home to members of the Issa family.
Mohsin and Zuber Issa have walked tall in Blackburn, pouring some of the wealth acquired through EG Group and Asda into their local area
Strains on the relationship
The brothers’ relationship is said to have deteriorated since the death of their father, Vali, in 2021. That year, the brothers and TDR finalised their £6.8 billion takeover of Asda, and Mohsin went to work full-time across the Pennines at Asda House, the supermarket’s head office in Leeds, while Zuber remained in Blackburn.
The subsequent breakdown of Mohsin’s marriage sent shockwaves through the Issas. For years, the brothers lived with their respective families in grand homes that sit side by side in a gated compound in Blackburn. Now, Mohsin and Price are believed to be living together in Yorkshire, closer to Asda’s head office.
While nobody denies that the episode has put a strain on family ties, a source close to the family said the Issas had come to terms with Mohsin’s decision. “Victoria has been around for a long time. Mohsin’s happiness is what they care about and she has put a smile on his face. They have all embraced it — even their mum,” the source said.
In recent months, Mohsin and Price’s relationship had become an open secret in the City. They decided to go public on Friday. “Victoria and Mohsin are highly private people who are in a relationship and building a life together,” a spokesman for the couple said.
Price is a successful businesswoman. She joined EY in 2006 and was made a partner at the age of 32, eventually going on to lead the firm’s private tax practice and advising wealthy individuals in the northwest, including Mohsin. That, and EY’s role as Asda’s auditor, has raised concerns over a conflict of interest.
Despite her high profile, within the firm and externally, Price’s exit from EY was sudden and unexpected. No formal announcement was made internally. Price’s lawyers said she had fully met all disclosure obligations with respect to her work, and that EY had confirmed this to her. EY declined to comment. Price did not carry out any work for Asda.
EY said it quit as Asda’s auditor on the back of the supermarket’s acquisition of EG’s UK business, announced last May.
“Following Asda’s acquisition of Euro Garages (Jersey) Ltd, and the timetable requirements of the audit, we mutually agreed with the board to stand down as auditors for the group,” an EY spokeswoman said. KPMG, which was already auditor to EG Group, has replaced EY as Asda’s auditor.
Where the streets do have a name: the family have been immortalised in Blackburn
Local heroes — but not to everyone
When The Sunday Times visited Blackburn last month, there were plenty of people with a tale to tell about the Issa brothers. A woman in a car-rental office gossiped about the amount they spent tiling their new mansions. In the town centre, a market trader grumbled that the brothers don’t give back to the community like the steel tycoon Jack Walker, whose largesse propelled Blackburn Rovers to an unlikely Premier League title in 1995.
Yet it would be churlish to argue that the brothers, who are the town’s biggest private sector employers, have not been a force for good in these parts.
“The Asian population here are phenomenally entrepreneurial and clearly the Issas are top of the tree,” said Phil Riley, leader of the local Labour council, over a coffee in the town centre. “We want to say to people, ‘You can do it in Blackburn’, and they are a great example. They’re an inspiration to people here.”
“They’re local boys done good,” the manager of the café chimed in. “It adds some prestige for the town.”
In recognition of their achievements, the Issas joined a select group of local heroes, including former Blackburn striker Alan Shearer, to have a road named after them. Issa Way, a link road just around the corner from EG Group’s head office, opened in 2021.
Riley is acutely aware that Blackburn sits within the 14th most deprived council district in England, and has adopted an “unashamedly pro-growth” attitude to development. Bolstered by that support, the Issas embarked on an extraordinary development spree.
Increasingly, though, their boundless ambitions are being met with local opposition. Ian Whalley, who lives across the road from the brothers’ new homes, is unhappy at the construction of what he calls “The Five Ugly Sisters”. “These houses are a blight on the landscape,” he said. “The council ignored legitimate protests against their development. It was just a sop to the Issa brothers. The whole thing was a fait accompli.”
One of the “Five Ugly Sisters” — an Issa development that has not met with universal acclaim in Blackburn
The end of cheap money
After riding the wave of cheap money with abandon, the steep rise in interest rates has changed the landscape dramatically for the Issa brothers. To slash debts, which had surpassed £10 billion across Asda and EG combined, they have had to turn from voracious buyers of assets into reluctant sellers.
Last March, EG sold and leased back 415 of its US convenience stores to property investor Realty Income for $1.5 billion (£1.2 billion). Two months later, EG sold its UK forecourt business to Asda for £2.27 billion. The interest bill on Asda’s £4.2 billion debt will be more than £400 million this year, although leverage is falling.
In spite of these constraints, Mohsin is still eager to do more deals, particularly for brands or retailers he could insert into Asda’s supermarkets. “Mohsin’s view is that shoppers shop at five retailers a week on average, and he sees a massive opportunity to consolidate that,” said a source familiar with his thinking. A potential auction of pharmacy giant Boots could provide an early test of his appetite.
Asda, however, is hardly firing on all cylinders. Since March 2022, when Mohsin laid out his ambition for Asda to leapfrog Sainsbury’s and reclaim its spot as Britain’s second-largest supermarket, the performance of the two retailers has drifted in different directions: Sainsbury’s has edged its market share up to 15.7 per cent and Asda’s has slid by almost one percentage point to 13.7 per cent — and its recent sales growth is near the bottom of the pack.
But while some Asda insiders have bristled at what they perceive to be Mohsin’s autocratic management style, few question his work ethic. “He works literally six-and-a-half days a week and he spends the other half a day at his mum’s on a Sunday afternoon. Zuber is usually there as well. They eat, sleep and drink it,” a source said.
Zuber, a softer, more personable character than his older brother, is said to lead a more rounded life that is less consumed by work. Multiple sources familiar with his thinking expect him to step back before his hard-charging sibling.
“I could imagine Mohsin running the business when he is 90, but Zuber always had a bigger vision about giving something back,” said a former colleague. “I would not be surprised if he steps away from the business in the next couple of years to focus on his charity work.”
With their collective fortune topping £5 billion, money is not the motivation it once was. To stay at the top, the brothers will need to find new fuel to keep the fire burning. Whenever they do decide to bow out, their legacy, in Blackburn and beyond, will not be quickly forgotten.