SHAHID KHAN

Shahid Khan was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1950. At 16, he came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study engineering.

He arrived in 1967 with $500 and worked as a dishwasher for $1.20 an hour. While studying industrial engineering he worked at Flex-N-Gate, a small auto parts company, and became its engineering director after graduating in 1971.

In 1978 he started his own company, Bumper Works, with a $50,000 Small Business Administration loan and $16,000 of his own savings. It made a one-piece truck bumper that was lighter and cheaper to build, and it won Toyota as a customer.

In 1980 he bought Flex-N-Gate from his former boss and merged the two. The company grew through the 1980s and 1990s supplying GM, Ford, Toyota and others.

Khan bought the Jacksonville Jaguars for $770 million, closing in January 2012, and became the first member of an ethnic minority to own an NFL team. He bought Fulham FC, then a Premier League club, from Mohamed Al-Fayed in July 2013 for roughly £150 to £200 million.

Fulham has gone up and down between the Premier League and the Championship several times since, and has been back in the top flight since 2022. In 2024 Jacksonville agreed a $1.4 billion renovation of the Jaguars' stadium, with the city and the team splitting the cost.

Flex-N-Gate is the foundation. It runs 76 plants worldwide with more than 27,000 employees and reported close to $9 billion in revenue in 2020.

It makes bumpers, lighting and other exterior parts for major automakers. Khan also owns the Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL, since 2012), Fulham FC (Premier League, since 2013), All Elite Wrestling (co-founded with his son Tony in 2019) and the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto.

A Four Seasons hotel in Jacksonville is due to open in late 2026.

Khan is a classic industrialist-investor. He built one company, Flex-N-Gate, over four decades.

His approach in manufacturing: obsess over quality, win long-term contracts with major automakers, and reinvest profits into expansion. In sports he bought assets that looked cheap or out of favor, a small-market NFL team and a Premier League club in need of a new owner, and has held them for the long term.

Building Flex-N-Gate from a one-product bumper startup into a global parts giant with 76 plants and more than 27,000 workers. The Jaguars have multiplied in value many times over since his $770 million purchase in 2012, and Fulham has been back in the Premier League since 2022.

But the most impressive win is the personal story: arriving with $500 and building a fortune worth about $16.5 billion through engineering and manufacturing, not tech or finance.

Sports results and a bruised stadium bet. The Jaguars made the playoffs only three times in his first 14 seasons (2017, 2022 and 2025) and burned through coaches, including the Urban Meyer disaster that lasted 13 games in 2021.

In 2018 he offered about £600 million to buy Wembley Stadium from England's Football Association, then withdrew the bid after a backlash, which fed Jacksonville fans' fears that he wanted to move the team to London. Fulham was relegated from the Premier League three times under him, in 2014, 2019 and 2021.

His sports assets have made money on paper, but the on-field returns have been patchy.

Khan built his fortune in manufacturing, the kind of boring, essential industry most ambitious people overlook. He values long relationships with customers like Toyota and GM, which go back decades.

His story is the American Dream in its most literal form, and he has given back to the University of Illinois that gave him his start.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1950 to a middle-class family. Khan married Ann Carlson, whom he met at the University of Illinois, in 1977.

They have two children: Tony Khan, who runs AEW and has held senior roles at the Jaguars and Fulham, and Shanna Khan. The family has given tens of millions to the University of Illinois, including $10 million for Huff Hall and $15 million for the veterinary school's cancer program, where their own dogs were treated.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (B.S., Industrial Engineering, 1971). He has credited the engineering program with teaching him the systematic thinking that built Flex-N-Gate.

He arrived at the university as a 16-year-old from Pakistan and has called his time there the most transformative experience of his life.

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