Book Stefan Persson

Stefan Persson is a Swedish businessman who guided the fashion retailer H&M through decades of international expansion. His father, Erling Persson, started H&M in 1947, the year Stefan was born, and Stefan took over its leadership from his father in 1982, serving as managing director until 1998. He went on to chair the company's board until May 2020, when he handed the chairmanship to his son, and he remains H&M's largest shareholder. Beyond fashion, Persson holds a significant stake in the Swedish technology group Hexagon AB. Through his private property company Ramsbury Invest he owns real estate in London, Paris and Stockholm, and he is sole director of Ramsbury Estates, a farming business centered on the village of Ramsbury in Wiltshire that he acquired in 1997 and has since grown by adding neighboring estates such as Littlecote and Hungerford Park. His contributions to Swedish business and education have been recognized with honorary doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics in 2001, Karolinska Institutet in 2010 and the Royal Institute of Technology in 2012. Persson offers rare firsthand perspective on building a family company into a global retail brand.