VERY fast fashion! Moment Danish ASOS billionaire, 50, is caught speeding at 82mph in 60 zone, given £100 fine and handed three points on his licence by cops in the Highlands
- Anders Holch Povlsen is the biggest shareholder in fashion company ASOS
This is the moment police fined the so-called ‘ASOS billionaire’ £100 and gave him three points on his licence after chasing him when he was caught speeding at more than 80mph in a 60 zone in the Highlands.
Anders Holch Povlsen is the fabulously wealthy owner of the international fashion business Bestseller and the biggest shareholder in the British online fashion company ASOS.
The humble Danish retail mogul, worth £6.1billion but known for liking a whisky down the pub and driving a bashed up VW Golf, is Scotland’s richest man with around 220,000 acres of the Highlands under his control after he started buying up some of the country’s grandest estates more than 15 years ago.
But according to the BBC docuseries Highland Cops, even Mr Povlsen, 50, is not above the law.
In the programme’s fourth episode, officers trailed the billionaire for several miles, clocking his speed at 82mph, before stopping him and handing him a £100 fine and three points on his licence.
Police can use ‘discretion’ when stopping traffic law violators, but one officer involved in his traffic stop said ‘there are certain thresholds we abide to’ and require officers ‘deal with offenders’.
Video shows the moment police handed Scotland’s biggest private landowner Anders Holch Povlsen a £100 fine and three points on his licence after he was caught speeding
Police speaking to the billionaire before handing him a £100 fine
Officers trailed Mr Povlsen before he slowed down, coming to a stop
Mr Holch Povlsen controls at least 220,000 acres of the Highlands after he started buying up some of the country’s grandest estates. With his wife Anne, they have formed a ‘200-year vision’ for their estates, which involves rewilding the land. The couple are pictured together
Mr Povlsen became enchanted with Scotland when one summer in the 1980s the young boy from Denmark went fly fishing in the Scottish Highlands with his parents and brother.
Some have called it the most expensive family holiday in history because three decades later he has spent £100million quietly turning himself into a real-life Monarch of the Glen.
He began building this ever-growing property portfolio in the autumn of 2006, with the £7.9 million acquisition of Glenfeshie, a 42,000-acre patch of the Cairngorms National Park.
Two years later, he spent another £15.5million acquiring the 23,000-acre Braeroy estate near Fort William, nearby Tulloch, and Lynaberack in the Cairngorms. Four estates were added between 2011 and 2015, and another three in 2016.
His Scottish landholdings cover an area half the size of Worcestershire, and surpassed the mere 217,000 acres owned by the Duke of Buccleuch – Britain’s biggest land owner before him.
Partial to a single malt and locally brewed real ale, he is known to visit local pubs in Scotland but rarely says much about himself.
Mr Povlsen stepping out his vehicle as he is approached by police
Mr Povlsen listening to officers as he is fined for speeding
Mr Povlsen pulling over after being caught speeding
With his wife Anne, they have formed a ‘200-year vision’ for their estates, which involves rewilding the land. In the vision, Mr Povlsen said he planned to pass the estate along to his four children and that they would continue his work.
But their dream was hit by tragedy when three of their four children were killed in the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka in 2018. Alfred, Alma and Agnes all died. Only their youngest daughter, Astrid, then ten, survived the attacks and the couple said that they remain ‘genuinely grateful’ that she is still alive.
In an open letter posted after their deaths, Mr Povlsen and wife Anne Storm Pedersen wrote that the project will take longer than a lifetime to complete and so would be carried on by their children after they died.
He wrote: ‘From our home at Glenfeshie, both Anne and myself – our children and our parents too – have long enjoyed a deep connection with this magnificent landscape.
‘As the holdings have grown and our common vision for the work becomes ever clearer, we have incorporated the entirety of the project into a venture we call Wildland.
Mr Povlsen has bought 11 Scottish estates and they are said to be worth £120million – more than double what he is believed to have paid for the properties. But he has spent huge sums rewilding land and refurbishing properties
Aldourie Castle is set within 500 acres of prime Scottish real estate near Loch Ness and is owned by Povlsen
The £7million tied island at Loch Eriboll on the northern tip of Sutherland was bought back in 2016
Povlesen’s first buy was Glenfeshie, whose 42,000 acres inspired Sir Edwin Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen
Lynaberack, tucked away in the Cairngorms, was one of Povlsen’s earliest purchases and cost him £5million
‘It’s a significant and lifelong commitment that we have made – not just for ourselves but for the Scottish people and Scottish nature too – a commitment which we believe in deeply’.
He began building this ever-growing property portfolio 14 years ago, in the autumn of 2006, with the £7.9 million acquisition of Glenfeshie, a 42,000-acre patch of the Cairngorms National Park. Two years later, he spent another £15.5million acquiring the 23,000-acre Braeroy estate near Fort William, nearby Tulloch, and Lynaberack in the Cairngorms. Four estates were added between 2011 and 2015, and another three in 2016.
His Scottish landholdings cover an area half the size of Worcestershire, and surpassed the mere 217,000 acres owned by the Duke of Buccleuch – Britain’s biggest land owner before him.
Partial to a single malt and locally brewed real ale, he is known to visit local pubs in Scotland but rarely says much about himself.
Mr Povlsen’s life as a Scottish laird is all a long way from the tiny Danish town of Brande, with a population of just 7,000, where Povlsen’s father, Troels, opened the family’s first clothes store in 1975.
Other outlets soon followed. And Anders was only 27 when Troels made him the sole owner of Bestseller.
By 2007, it was so successful that supermodel Gisele Bundchen was hired to promote it.
Bestseller employs 15,000 people and boasts nearly 6,000 shops. He owns brands such as Jack & Jones and Vero Moda, and 27 per cent of ASOS.com, Britain’s biggest internet fashion retailer.
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