Veteran retailer and investor Albert Gubay dies
ALBERT Gubay, a multi-millionaire businessman and investor, has died at the age of 87 at his home in Wilmslow Cheshire.
Gubay, who founded discount supermarket Kwik Save with one shop in Prestatyn in 1965, also set up North West gyms business Total Fitness.
His pledge to give away half of his fortune – estimated at close to £1bn – earned him a Papal Knighthood in 2013 from the Catholic Church.
His business the Isle of Man-based Derwent Group, which owns property assets in Liverpool and Manchester, said: “It is with the greatest sadness that we have to announce the death of our founder.”
In 2011, Albert Gubay told the BBC that, as a young man he had made a divine pact: “One Saturday, I didn’t know where the next penny was coming from and I lay on my bed and I had this conversation with God,” he said.
“I said ‘God, help me and whatever I make over the years of my life, when I die, half will go to the church.'”
Mr Gubay was born in 1928 in Rhyl to an Irish mother and Iraqi Jewish father. He began his business career in North Wales selling sweets during rationing in the aftermath of World War Two.
