Boss turns 74 employees, including admin and warehouse staff, into millionaires

A British billionaire has made headlines with the extraordinary gift he gave his employees.

Matt Moulding's massive share giveaway has turned 74 of his employees into millionaires.

The businessman, founder of Manchester-based The Hut Group (THG), gifted around NZ$1.9 billion worth of shares to his 430 staff.

Moulding, who began his working life selling CDs online before taking up jobs running websites for other retailers and going on to build his own global retail empire, wanted to reward his employees.

He gave away shares to all his staff, including secretaries and warehouse employees.

It is not the first time he has made such a move - THG has rewarded employees with huge payouts from free shares more than once in the past decade.

The company is a global retail powerhouse and sells its own beauty and health products through 200 websites. Photo / Instagram

With an online beauty and nutrition retailer, which includes brands such as MyProtein and Lookfantastic, worth about $10 billion, THG sells its products through 200 websites. It also licenses its technology to corporations such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola.

"We have created more millionaires than any other company in British corporate history," Moulding told the Mirror in the UK.

"The shares are 100 per cent gifted, no-one has had to pay anything. We have genuinely changed so many lives."

Since THG was founded in 2004, employees have been awarded more than a fifth of the company's shares.

Among the new millionaires, there are managers but also drivers and admin staff.

Moulding, a father-of-four and self-confessed workaholic, is worth about $1.8 billion.

He reportedly drinks 20 shots of coffee a day in order to run his business and keep up with his workload.

On top of the generous act to his employees, Moulding has reportedly also donated about $19 million to support Covid-19 relief efforts and has spent nearly $4 million on PPE for frontline workers.