Richard Desmond, Owner of Express Newspaper and founder of Northern and Shell, was born in in Edgware, North London in1951, on December 8th. After his parent’s divorce, he lived with his mother. He left his studies at the age of 14 due to poor academic performance and started working as a drummer and coat-check room. After some time, he found a job in Thomson Newspaper, for Classified Advertisement. Later, he left his job to join another advertising company. At the age of 21, he had two record shops. He spent subsequent years working hard and chasing his dream and in 1974 he finally published International Musician and Recording World. After almost 8 years, in 1982, he published British version of Penthouse, an American pornography magazine, and successfully drew the attention of masses. Later he sold it in 2004. He came in public conscious in 1993 when he published celebrity weekly OK! Which became the largest weekly magazine across the world with 23editions and 31 million readers. In 2000, he enlarged his groups with different titles Daily, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Daily star Sunday. Still 700,000 copies of both Sunday Express and Daily and around 850,000 copies of Daily Star are sold.
He has successfully established his offices in Los Angeles, Broughton, London, Glasgow, New York, and Dublin with 2,000 employees.
Philanthropic work:
In 2003, he, along with Roger Daltrey, formed a charitable group RD Crusaders to raise money. And the group has successfully raised £14million through string of concerts for charities such as The Teenage Cancer Trust, Marie Curie, Evelina Children’s Hospital and Norwood Charity. He is the president of the Norwood Charity from 2006.
He has assisted establishing the Richard Desmond Children’s Eye Centre, a part of Moorfields Eye Hospital, which has become the world’s largest specialist pediatric eye clinic and treats over 25,000 children’s eyes a year.
He, according to Sunday Time Rich List 2009, is the 44th richest man in Britain with £950 million fortune. Forbes Magazine states him to the 605th richest man in the world with $2.0 billion fortune
