Mark Dixon (businessman)

Dixon was born in November 1959. The son of a car mechanic, he was educated at Rainsford High School, Essex, England. On noticing that a new housing estate needed nourishment for its gardens, he sold peat distributed by wheelbarrow.[1]

After leaving school at 16, Dixon founded a sandwich making business, Dial-a-Snack, which delivered locally on a butcher's bicycle. After the business failed, he travelled the world, becoming a barman in St Tropez, a miner in Australia, a farmhand in Asia; and selling encyclopedias.[1][2]

Returning to Essex, he invested £600 in a burger van, based on London's North Circular road.[1] From profits he then bought seven other vans, but found difficulty in obtaining good and regular bun supply.[1] He set up The Bread Roll Company to supply his own and other mobile fast food vendors, which he sold in 1988 for £800,000.[2]

Relocating to Brussels, Belgium, he set up an apartment rental business. While sitting in a cafe, he regularly noticed how local business people were conducting meetings around the small tables of local coffee shops. He started Regus, an office space business, in 1989.[3] By mid-2001 the business was worth £2bn, with Dixon's 60 percent stake making him a billionaire.[2] However, after the failure of the dot.com boom, Dixon's stake fell and he was valued at less than £80m. In 2002, 58% of the UK arm of the business was sold to UK private equity firm Alchemy Partners.[2][4] Regus bought the stake back three years later.[5] Dixon has since rebuilt the business and expanded internationally. The company now has a presence in over 100 countries.[6]

Dixon owns the Chateau de Berne vineyard in Provence which includes a five-star hotel and restaurant.[7] The vineyard produces around 5 million bottles of wine a year, making it the second-largest producer in Provence.[8] In 2017, Dixon bought the 150-acre Kingscote Estate in East Grinstead, West Sussex to expand production to the United Kingdom.[9]

According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2020 his net worth was estimated at £770 million, a decrease of 156 million from 2019.[10]

Dixon married journalist Trudi Groves in 1988. In 2005, Dixon divorced Trudi in a £28.7m settlement.[2] Dixon is a resident of Monaco for tax reasons.[2] He voluntarily pays tax in the United Kingdom.[11]

• Mark Dixon bio at Bloomberg