Morrisons
 |
|
| Morrisons | |
| Public limited company | |
| Traded as | : |
| Industry | Retailing |
| Founded | 1899 (Bradford, England) |
| Founder | William Morrison |
| Headquarters |
Bradford, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom |
|
Number of locations
|
 569 |
|
Key people
|
Andrew Higginson (Chairman) David Potts (CEO) |
| Products | Supermarket |
| Revenue | £16.122 billion (2015) |
| £314 million (2015) | |
| £222 million (2015) | |
|
Number of employees
|
125,000 (2014) |
| Website | www |
Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, trading as Morrisons, is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets (behind Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda) in the United Kingdom, headquartered in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England.
Founded in 1899 by William Morrison, hence the abbreviation Wm Morrison, it began as an egg and butter stall in Rawson Market, Bradford, England. Until 2004, Morrisons store locations were primarily focused in the north of England, but with the takeover of Safeway in that year, the company's presence increased significantly in the south of England, Wales and Scotland. As of May 2014 the company had 515 superstores across England, Wales and Scotland. There is also a Morrison's store in Gibraltar, which is the chain's only store outside of Great Britain.
Morrisons' market share in June 2015 was 11%, down 0.3% from 2014 – behind Tesco (28.7%), Asda (17.3%) Sainsbury's (16.6%) but ahead of The Co-operative Food (6.1%).
The company is listed on the and is part of the FTSE 100 Index of companies. The Morrison family currently owns around 10% of the company.
The company was founded by William Morrison in 1899 who started the business as an egg and butter merchant in Rawson Market, Bradford, England, operating under the name of Wm Morrison Limited.
His son Ken Morrison took over the company in 1952, aged 21. In 1958, Morrisons opened a small shop in the city centre. It was the first self-service store in Bradford, the first store to have prices on its products, and it had three checkouts. The company opened its first supermarket, "Victoria", in the Girlington district of Bradford in 1961.
In 1967, Morrisons became a public limited company listed on the .
In March 2004 Morrisons, acquired Safeway, a British supermarket chain which owned 479 stores, allowing Morrisons to have a larger presence in southern England. The company was purchased for £3.3 billion, comprising 1 new Morrisons share (enabling Safeway shareholders to have a 40% stake in the enlarged group and reducing the Morrison family's shareholding to 18%), plus 60 pence in cash (paid for by the divestment of 52 overlapping stores) for each Safeway share held. The acquisition quickly ran into difficulties caused in part by Safeway UK's outgoing management changing that chain's accounting systems six weeks before the transaction was completed. The result was a series of profit warnings being issued by Morrisons, poor financial results and a reversion to manual systems.
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Wikipedia