Biography of Shahid Khan

American Billionaire Entrepreneur

Personal Life

Shahid Khan was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the United States when he was 16 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.He said he spent his first night in a $2/night room at the Champaign YMCA and that his first job in the United States was washing dishes for $1.20 an hour. He joined the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the school. He graduated from the UIUC School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering with a BSc in 1971.

Shahid Khan (born c. 1950) is a Pakistani born American billionaire businessman. He is the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL) and owner of automobile parts manufacturer Flex-N-Gate Corp. in Urbana, Illinois.He is the NFL’s first minority immigrant owner, he bought the Jacksonville Jaguars for $770 million in January 2012. He founded his own company, making a one piece car bumper design that later became the industry standard, with a few thousand dollars of savings and a small loan. Today his Flex-N-Gate sells $3 billion a year worth of parts to 41 car brands.

Flex N Gate

Khan worked at the automobile 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 customizing pickup trucks and body shop repairs.The transaction involved a $50,000 loan from the Small Business Loan Corporation and $16,000 in his savings.

In 1980 he bought his former employer Flex-N-Gate, 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 pick ups and by 1989 it was the sole supplier for the entire Toyota line in the United States. Toyota Sensei instruction drastically transformed the company efficiency and ability to change its manufacturing process within a few minutes.Since then the company has grown from $17 million in sales to an estimated $2 billion in 2010.

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.

Khan has received a number of awards from the University of Illinois, including a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999 from the Department of Mechanical Science and Industrial Engineering, the Alumni Award for Distinguished Service in 2006 from the College of Engineering, and (with his wife, Ann) the Distinguished Service Award in 2005 from the University of Illinois Alumni Association.

In May 2012, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Flex-N-Gate $57,000 for health violations at their Urbana plant.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Khan's first attempt to purchase a National Football League team came in February 11, 2010, when he entered into an agreement to acquire 60 percent of the St. Louis Rams from Chip Rosenbloom and Lucia Rodriguez, subject to approval by other NFL owners. However, Stan Kroenke, the minority shareholder of the Rams, ultimately exercised a clause in his ownership agreement to match any proposed bid.

On November 29, 2011, Khan agreed to purchase the Jacksonville Jaguars from Wayne Weaver and his ownership group subject to NFL approval. Weaver announced his sale of the team to Khan later that same day. The terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed, other than a verbal commitment to keep the team in Jacksonville, Florida. The sale was finalized on January 4, 2012. The purchase price for 100% share in the Jaguars is estimated to be $760 million. The NFL owners unanimously approved the purchase on December 14, 2011. The sale made Khan the first member of an ethnic minority ever to own an NFL team.