The owner of Jacksonville Jaguars and one of the richest persons in the world was born on the 18th of July 1950 in a middle class family working in the construction industry in Lahore, Pakistan, while his mother taught math. His father was an entrepreneur, although a lawyer by profession and since the grandfather of Shahid had seven wives there were no less than 50 grandchildren.
At the age of 16 Shahid moved to America to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his first night in the country was spent at the YMCA, paying $2 a night and finding a job washing dishes that paid 1.2 dollars an hour. His dream at this time was to become an architect but after a year of college he just wanted to get rich any way he could.
He was a part of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering in 1971 from the UIUC College of Engineering. The first job in his field was at the Flex-N-Gate automotive manufacturing company while still studying at the University of Illinois and after he graduated he was hired as the engineering director of the company. He met Ann Carlson at the college bar and they were in a long relationship until the year 1977 when they finally got married. They have two children, -Tony, born on October 10, 1982 and Shanna.
He began his own company in 1978 specializing in car bumpers for the customized pickup trucks and he entitled it Bumper Works. He was 20 years old at this time and the bumpers designed by him were revolutionary due to the weight saved while also improving the overall structural support of the truck. The initial funds came from a $50,000 loan taken from the Small Business Loan Corporation and he had his own savings of $16,000. The company was productive and he managed to buy Flex-N-Gate in 1980 from Charles Gleason Butzow and adding Bumper Works to the whole project.
The careful management and insight of Khan led to a significant growth of the company, beginning to supply bumpers for the Big Three automakers and for a few Toyota pickups at first, but then he became the sole supplier for the Toyota line in USA. The Toyota Way (namely the principles of continuous improvement and respect for people) became the philosophy of his companies and this led to a continuous growth with 16,000 employees, 52 manufacturing facilities and nine facilities for product development and engineering spread through Canada, USA, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Spain.
He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999 from the Department of Mechanical Science and Industrial Engineering for his achievements in the field and in 2006 he also got the Alumni Award for Distinguished Service from the University of Illinois.
In 2010 he became interested in the National Football League and in 11 February he tried to purchase a team after entering into an agreement with Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez to buy 60% of the St. Louis Rams but one of the minor shareholders, Stan Kroenke, wanted to match the proposed bid and got the rights for the team.
Although this was a failed attempt, he didn’t give up and a year later, on the 29th of November 2011 he purchased the Jacksonville Jaguars from Wayne Weaver, finalizing the sale on January 4, 2012. The exact terms of the deal are uncertain but it is estimated that the price for all the shares of the team was of $760 million at the time. This was an event in itself since Shahid Khan became the first member of an ethnic minority (being a Muslim born in Pakistan and receiving US citizenship in 1991) to own a team into the National Football League.
The eldest son, Tony, graduated from University of Illinois Laboratory High School in 2001 and is currently working as the senior VP of the Football Technology and Analytics for the Jacksonville Jaguars while also managing the Bio-Alternatives and Smart Structures ventures of his father. Shanna Khan, the youngest daughter focuses on philanthropic causes such as the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics of the University of Illinois, the Spurlock Museum and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
Shahid didn’t focus on the NFL alone, since in July 2013 he negotiated with Mohamed Al Fayed to purchase the Fulham Premier League soccer club in London and the deal was finalized on the 12th of the month for an estimated price of 150-200 pounds, although Khan said that the sum was “highly confidential”.
The National Minority Supplier Development Council awarded Mr. Khan the Minority Business Leadership Award in 2007 and he also became a Lincoln Laureate in 2011, which is the highest award of the state for achievement given by the Lincoln Academy of Illinois for his philanthropic work which is mostly through the NFL Foundation, offering financial grants to children and family programs and donations. The Foundation invested into the City of Jacksonville as a partner in the initiative to help members coming back from military service to reintegrate into civilian life and offered a long list of other aids as well.
The Jacksonville Jaguars didn’t have a very high success streak during Khan’s ownership but the value of the franchise still jumped by 15% in 2014 alone. The Flex-N-Gate company continued to grow and it grosses $4.9 billion in sales, making Shahid Khan a very rich man with a net worth of 4.6 billion dollars at the time we are writing this and according to Forbes magazine.
The successful ventures allowed Shahid to afford some luxury and thus he ordered a custom-made yacht with a length of 300-feet that took six years to build and was finally completed at the end of 2014. He called his prized possession Kismet and it features a range of salon and deck lounges with a capacity of up to 12 guests in six cabins and a crew of 22.
When he wanted to create his home he chose Chicago, where he bought a penthouse along the Magnificent Mile in 2006 on the 61st floor of the Park Tower to have a great view of the Chicagoland and of Lake Michigan.
