Who owns WHSmith? (and what happened to TGJones) | Highstreett

Who owns WHSmith?

There are two answers now because it got split in half. The high street shops were sold in 2025 to Modella Capital, which is a British private equity firm, and they got renamed TGJones. The WHSmith name still exists and is still a British listed company, but only in airports, train stations and hospitals.

Hello, this one is a bit of a mess to explain which is exactly why it is worth writing down. Most people noticed their local WHSmith turn into something called TGJones and assumed the whole company had been sold or gone bust, and it is neither of those things, and the bit that did get sold is now closing about a third of its shops.

Why did WHSmith change its name to TGJones?

Because the shops were sold and the buyer did not get to keep the name.

WHSmith agreed in March 2025 to sell its high street business, which was about 480 shops, to Modella Capital, and the deal completed on 30 June 2025 for a headline price of around £76 million. WHSmith kept the travel side of the business, which is the shops in airports and stations and hospitals, and it kept the name for itself because that side was doing most of the money anyway.

So Modella had 480 shops and no name to put above them, and they came up with TGJones.

Is TG Jones a real person?

No, there was never a Mr Jones and the name was invented.

Modella were fairly open about why they picked it. The idea was that Jones would carry the same sort of family business feeling that Smith does, so the shops would still feel like the thing they used to be. A private equity firm sat down and made up a family name so that a chain would read as a family business, which I think is the single most useful thing on this page for understanding how any of this works.

It also did not work. When Modella announced the restructuring this year they blamed the loss of the 233 year old WHSmith name for damaging brand recognition almost overnight, which is a slightly remarkable thing to complain about given they are the ones who did it.

Who owns TGJones?

Modella Capital, which is a private equity firm based in Britain rather than America.

I mention that because a lot of the conversation about who owns the high street ends up being about American money, and this is one of the biggest changes to British high streets in years and the buyer is British. Modella also owns Hobbycraft, The Original Factory Shop and a few others, and they bought the UK arm of Claire's out of administration in September 2025, which then stopped trading in April 2026 and closed all 154 shops with about 1,300 people losing their jobs.

Is WHSmith still British owned?

Yes, the WHSmith that is left is still a British company listed on the London Stock Exchange, and it runs roughly 1,300 shops in airports, stations and hospitals.

So the honest answer is that WHSmith did not get bought by anyone foreign, it sold off its own high street shops and kept the profitable half. Whether that counts as a British institution surviving depends on how you feel about a company that started as a news stand ending up as an airport chain.

Is TGJones closing down?

Not entirely, but a lot of it is.

Modella got a restructuring plan approved in the High Court in early July 2026 which allows it to close up to 150 of its shops. Eight closed straight away. The court heard that the business was close to insolvency and was facing a cash shortfall of nearly £8 million within that week if the plan did not go through. As part of it around 120 landlords will get no rent at all for up to three years and hundreds of other shops will have their rent cut by somewhere between 15% and 75%, and Modella has put in more than £35 million.

Before that, a restructuring document circulated to creditors in May showed the chain owed £3.4 million in unpaid business rates, about £4 million to suppliers and an £8.4 million tax bill that HMRC had agreed to defer.

The chain had about 450 shops and 4,700 staff at the point the plan was approved. If you want to know whether your local one is going, that list has been coming out in pieces locally rather than all at once, so your local paper is honestly a better source than anything national.

Has WHSmith always been a chain?

Yes and for a very long time, it just used to be a family one.

It was started in 1792 in London by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna, and it stayed in the family for generations. The bit that made it enormous was getting the bookstall concessions at railway stations from the 1840s onwards, which is why there has been a WHSmith in every station for most of British railway history. So the shops in the stations are the original business and the high street shops came later, which makes the 2025 split slightly less strange than it first looks.

None of that makes it independent by our definition. It has been a large chain for well over a century and a listed company for decades. But there is a difference between a chain that grew and a chain that got bought, renamed and loaded up with debt inside fourteen months.

What can you actually do about it

Not much about TGJones specifically, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

The practical version is that most of what people went to WHSmith on the high street for, which was magazines, newspapers, cards, stationery and cheap books, is stuff an independent newsagent, card shop or bookshop in your town almost certainly still sells. Those places have been competing with WHSmith for generations and a lot of them are still there. That is what we built Highstreett for, and every business listed on it has had its ownership checked against Companies House first.

Questions people ask

Is TGJones the same company as WHSmith? Not any more. They were the same until June 2025 and now they are two separate businesses with different owners. TGJones is the old high street shops owned by Modella Capital, and WHSmith is the travel shops which is still a listed British company.

Is Modella Capital American? No, it is a British private equity firm. This is one of the reasons I do not think the useful question is which country an owner is from, because it makes no difference to a supplier who is not getting paid.

Why do the shops still look the same inside? Because it was a rebrand rather than a new business, so it is the same shops with the same stock and mostly the same staff with a different sign outside. That is usually how this works, which is the whole reason ownership is hard to spot from the pavement.

How many WHSmith shops are left? Around 1,300 under the WHSmith name in airports, stations and hospitals. TGJones had about 450 before the closures started and up to 150 of those are going.

How do I check who owns a shop myself? Search the company name on Companies House and then look at the persons with significant control register, which shows who ultimately controls it, and it is free to use. The awkward bit is that the name above the door and the registered company name are usually different, which is most of the reason nobody does this while they are stood in a shop.

Last checked 10 August 2026. This one is moving quickly so it will go out of date faster than most, and if you spot something wrong email alex@digitalhighstreett.com and I will fix it.