Shahid Khan (July 18, 1950) also known as Shad Khan, is a Pakistani-American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL) and Fulham F.C. of the English Premier League. Khan is also the owner of the automobile parts manufacturer Flex-N-Gate in Urbana, Illinois.
Khan was featured on the front cover of Forbes magazine in 2012, associating him as the face of the American Dream.[4] As of August 2018, Khan's net worth is over $7.0 billion. He is ranked 70th in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, and is overall the 221st wealthiest person in the world.[5][6] He is also the richest person of Pakistani origin.[5]
Khan was born in Lahore, Pakistan, to a middle-class family who were involved in the construction industry.[7] His mother (now retired) was a professor of mathematics.[2] He moved to the United States in 1967 at age 16[2] to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[8][9] When he went to the United States, he spent his first night in a $2/night room at the University YMCA,[2] and his first job was washing dishes for $1.20 an hour.[2] He joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the school.[10] He graduated from the UIUC College of Engineering with a BSc in Industrial Engineering in 1971. He later was awarded the Mechanical Science and Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999.[11][12][13]
Khan worked at the automotive manufacturing company Flex-N-Gate while attending the University of Illinois. When he graduated he was hired as the engineering director for the company. In 1978, he started Bumper Works, which made car bumpers for customized pickup trucks and body shop repairs.[8] The transaction involved a $50,000 loan from the Small Business Administration and $16,000 in his savings.[14]
In 1980, he bought Flex-N-Gate from his former employer Charles Gleason Butzow, bringing Bumper Works into the fold. Khan grew the company so that it supplied bumpers for the Big Three automakers. In 1984, he began supplying a small number of bumpers for Toyota pickups. By 1987 it was the sole supplier for Toyota pickups and by 1989 it was the sole supplier for the entire Toyota line in the United States. Adopting The Toyota Way increased company efficiency and ability to change its manufacturing process within a few minutes.[8][15] Since then, the company has grown from $17 million in sales to an estimated $2 billion in 2010.[16]
By 2011, Flex-N-Gate had 12,450 employees and 48 manufacturing plants in the United States and several other countries, and took in $3 billion in revenue.[9]
In May 2012, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Flex-N-Gate $57,000 for health violations at its Urbana plant.[17]
