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Fashion & ApparelHome & DIY 67 CITED SOURCES UPDATED 2026-07-07
BDS-1000 Score 161 /1000 E Tier E - Limited
Military ↗ 0.00 Digital ↗ 0.00 Economic ↗ 1.10 Political ↗ 2.36

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BDS-1000 Dossier: Next plc

Classification: Public OSINT Research Corpus - Documentary Record Compiled: 2026-07-09 Scope: Next plc (LSE: NXT), UK fashion, homeware and general-merchandise retailer, headquartered in Enderby, Leicestershire, England. Assessment draws exclusively on four domain audits (Military, Digital, Economic, Political) compiled 2026-06-27.

Key Findings

  • Economic: Next’s supply chain intersects indirectly with Delta Galil Industries (TASE: DELG), an Israeli apparel group whose 80%-owned subsidiary operates retail branches in Ma’ale Adumim (West Bank) and East Jerusalem, through a shared Ted Baker brand licence and a separate Victoria’s Secret UK joint venture with a global Delta Galil customer - no direct procurement relationship between Next and Delta Galil itself was established, and the Ted Baker licences lapsed after Ted Baker’s 2024 insolvency.12
  • Political: Next’s controlling family maintains documented personal/family-trust philanthropy in Israel - a brother of CEO Simon Wolfson chairs Beit Halochem UK, which supports disabled IDF veterans - a family and charitable channel, not a corporate act of Next plc.345
  • Political: Next made no public statement on the 7 October 2023 attack or the Gaza war, in documented contrast to its vocal, commercially concrete 2022 exit from Russia and Ukraine (~ÂŁ85 million sales impact).678
  • Not found: No military or digital/technology nexus, no listing in any authoritative settlement-business database (OHCHR, Who Profits), and no Next plc corporate donation, contract, or statement tying the company itself to the Israeli state or military.91011

Target Profile

FieldDetail
Company NameNext plc
JurisdictionUnited Kingdom (England and Wales)
HeadquartersEnderby, Leicestershire, England
SectorFashion, footwear, homeware and general-merchandise retail (physical stores, online direct, and third-party “Total Platform” marketplace)
OwnershipLSE: NXT; FTSE 100; independent company, no controlling parent; free float exceeding 95%; institutional ownership ~81–83% including BlackRock, Vanguard funds, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Legal & General, M&G, Schroders, Norges Bank, FMR LLC, and the Next Esop Trust (employee share trust); no Israeli-domiciled holder identified12
Key Executives / GovernanceSimon Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise - CEO since 2002, Conservative life peer since 2010; Michael Roney - Chairman since 2017; board includes independent directors with retail, private equity and finance backgrounds (Bunzl, Goodyear Dunlop, Apax, S.G. Warburg, Deutsche Bank)1314
Israeli-Nexus SummaryNo military, digital, or direct corporate economic/political nexus identified; the documented links are a small online-only retail channel (next.co.il) and Wolfson-family personal/charitable philanthropy in Israel, both distinct from Next plc’s corporate conduct

Key Facts:

Executive Summary

Next plc is a UK-founded, UK-incorporated, LSE-listed fashion and homeware retailer with no disclosed Israeli ownership, subsidiary, manufacturing site, or defence-sector relationship. Across all four domains audited - military, digital, economic, and political - the overwhelming pattern in the public record is absence: no defence contracts, no dual-use products, no Israeli-domiciled technology vendors, no listing in any of the authoritative settlement-business trackers (the OHCHR database, Who Profits), and no corporate statement or lobbying position on the Israel-Palestine conflict.9101118

The strongest documented vectors are economic and political, and both are qualified rather than direct. Economically, Next’s supply chain touches the Israeli apparel group Delta Galil Industries only through shared brand-licensing architecture - Delta Galil holds (held) a Ted Baker underwear/loungewear licence while Next separately holds a Ted Baker childrenswear licence, and Next’s 51% joint-venture stake in Victoria’s Secret UK & Ireland makes it a customer of a company (Victoria’s Secret) that Delta Galil’s Bogart Group subsidiary also supplies. No direct contractual relationship between Next and Delta Galil was established, and a third-party synthesis claiming Next “rescued” a Delta Galil client or that the Ted Baker licence gives Delta Galil control over Next-retailed goods could not be corroborated against any primary source and is treated as unverified.12 Delta Galil’s own subsidiary, Delta Israel Brands, is documented by Who Profits as operating retail branches in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and in East Jerusalem - but this is a fact about Delta Galil, not about Next.10

Politically, the only substantive documented nexus runs through the founding Wolfson family rather than Next plc as a corporate entity. Andrew Wolfson, brother of CEO Simon Wolfson, chairs Beit Halochem UK, a charity supporting disabled IDF veterans, and the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust (of which Simon Wolfson is a trustee) is listed as a Founder Benefactor of that charity. A separate, legally distinct Wolfson Family Charitable Trust has reportedly made grants to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Beit Halochem (Tel Aviv). Wolfson-family philanthropy channelled through the Wolfson Foundation is otherwise characterised in the source record as scientific, medical, cultural, and academic (Weizmann Institute, Wolfson Medical Center, Bar-Ilan University, the Israel Museum). None of this charitable activity is attributed to Next plc as a corporate actor, and several circulating claims - that Simon Wolfson sits on the board of the New Israel Fund, or is a trustee of UK Friends of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers (UK-AWIS) - were traced to source and found to be misattributions to other individuals.34519

What is not supported by the evidence is equally important to the record: no Next plc defence contract, dual-use product, or logistics-support relationship with any Israeli military or security body (Military = 0.00); no Israeli-domiciled technology, surveillance, or cloud vendor in Next’s stack, and no connection to Project Nimbus (Digital = 0.00); no foreign direct investment in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories, no Israel revenue disclosure beyond a single 2016 press estimate, and no settlement-linked labelling or sourcing finding (Economic tempered to 1.10); and no corporate statement, lobbying position, or donation to Israeli state, military, or settlement bodies, set against a documented - and notably asymmetric - silence on Israel/Gaza compared with Next’s vocal 2022 exit from Russia (Political at 2.36).

The resulting BDS-1000 V4 score is BRS 161, Tier E (Minimal), driven by Political as the maximum domain score (2.36) with Economic (1.10) as the only other non-zero domain. This reflects a company whose documented Israel/Palestine nexus is narrow, indirect, and substantially carried by caveats (unverified claims, family-level rather than corporate-level philanthropy, a small online-only retail channel) rather than by any confirmed direct transaction with the Israeli state, military, or settlement enterprise.

Timeline of Relevant Events

DateEvent
1864Next’s predecessor, Joseph Hepworth & Son, founded as a UK tailoring business; no defence-sector lineage documented.13
c. 2013next.co.il online retail channel serving Israeli consumers reported to have launched, operated as a direct Next Retail Ltd. channel.20
January 2016A generic international franchise-recruitment notice on Next’s Israeli site prompts a Globes report that Next was “mulling” opening physical stores in Israel; Next’s UK press office clarifies it has no such plans and that the notice is standard across all international pages.1617
2018Delta Galil Industries (Israeli apparel group) signs a global licensing agreement for Ted Baker men’s underwear and loungewear - a licence structurally separate from any Next arrangement.1
2019Next enters its own, separately negotiated Ted Baker licence covering childrenswear.12
2020–2021Next takes a 51% joint-venture stake in Victoria’s Secret UK & Ireland retail and digital operations.12
February 2022Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Next closes its Russian and Ukrainian e-commerce operations and halts shipments to Russia, at an estimated £85 million sales impact.82122
7 October 2023 – ongoingIsrael-Hamas war period; no public evidence identified of any Next plc corporate statement, and Next does not appear on trackers of companies that publicly condemned the Hamas attack.67
May 2024Ted Baker enters bankruptcy/closure proceedings, lapsing both the Delta Galil and the Next Ted Baker licensing relationships.2
October 2024Who Profits documents Delta Galil’s 80%-owned subsidiary, Delta Israel Brands, operating retail branches in Ma’ale Adumim (West Bank) and East Jerusalem - a fact about Delta Galil, with no Next corporate link established.10
September 2025OHCHR updates its database of businesses involved in Israeli settlement activity to 158 entities; no UK apparel retailer, and no Next entity, is listed.9
7 November 2025Ethical Consumer’s Next plc profile is updated; no Israel-Palestine-specific rating is displayed for the company despite the site’s general rating category.23

Corporate Overview

Next plc is an ordinary UK public company (LSE: NXT), operating on a one-share-one-vote basis with no golden share, tracing its origin to Joseph Hepworth & Son, a tailoring business founded in 1864.13 It is a FTSE 100 constituent with a free float exceeding 95% and no controlling corporate parent; disclosed institutional holders include BlackRock, Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Legal & General, M&G, Schroders, Norges Bank, FMR LLC, and the Next Esop Trust, none of which is Israeli-domiciled or Israel-focused.12

Next’s commercial structure includes physical UK/international retail, an online direct channel (NextDirect), and “Total Platform,” an in-house e-commerce and fulfilment system licensed to third-party brands such as Gap UK, Reiss, and Joules; no Israeli brand or supplier is identified among disclosed Total Platform participants.24 Next’s manufacturing and sourcing footprint, per its Modern Slavery Transparency Statement 2025–26, is concentrated in China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Turkey; Israel is not listed among Next’s disclosed sourcing countries.15

Next’s only identified Israel-facing commercial presence is next.co.il, an online-only retail channel with no physical stores, reported to have launched around 2013 and operated directly by Next Retail Ltd. rather than through a franchisee.20 No registered Israeli operating entity, employee headcount, or tax registration behind that site could be determined from public records - an evidence gap rather than a confirmed structure.16

Next’s supply chain intersects indirectly, via shared brand-licensing architecture rather than direct procurement, with Delta Galil Industries (TASE: DELG), whose subsidiary Delta Israel Brands operates retail branches in Ma’ale Adumim and East Jerusalem. Delta Galil separately held a Ted Baker underwear/loungewear licence (2018) and its Bogart Group subsidiary supplies Victoria’s Secret globally; Next holds its own, distinct Ted Baker childrenswear licence (2019) and a 51% joint-venture stake in Victoria’s Secret UK & Ireland (2020–21). No primary-source evidence establishes a direct contractual relationship between Next and Delta Galil itself, and both Ted Baker licences lapsed after the brand’s 2024 insolvency.12

An unrelated Israeli company, “Nextcom Group” (Tel Aviv Stock Exchange-listed, majority-owned by Guy Israeli), is profiled by Who Profits for Israeli Ministry of Defence infrastructure contracts and a Golan Heights wind-energy joint venture; Who Profits explicitly confirms this entity has no corporate relationship to Next plc - an important name-confusion risk to flag and reject.25

Separately from Next plc’s corporate structure, the founding Wolfson family administers two distinct charitable trusts - the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust (of which CEO Simon Wolfson is a trustee) and the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust (on which Simon Wolfson does not sit) - both legally and operationally separate from Next plc.45

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of any mechanism connecting Next plc to Israeli military activity. Next is a consumer fashion and homeware retailer with no defence contracting, dual-use product line, heavy-machinery/construction relationship, defence-prime supply chain integration, base-logistics service, or munitions/weapons-platform activity of any kind.18

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Next’s business model - mainstream consumer apparel and homeware manufactured chiefly in Asia - structurally precludes most military-nexus pathways; no SIBAT (Israeli defence-export directorate) listing, UK strategic export licence, or defence-cooperation announcement involving Next was identified.18 Consumer boycott-aggregator sites list Next, but on inspection the stated rationale is the founding Wolfson family’s ownership and charitable giving, not any corporate military contract; the material also conflates Next CEO Simon Wolfson with a separate public figure, David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Tredegar, who was reported personally fundraising for a volunteer cafĂ© feeding IDF soldiers.26327 This is a family/personal matter attributed to a different individual, not a corporate act of Next plc, and no NGO or civil-society investigation (Who Profits, AFSC, Stop Wapenhandel) names Next plc on military grounds.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of any Israeli-origin technology, surveillance, biometric, cloud, or AI vendor relationship, or of Next providing technology or data to any Israeli state, military, or intelligence body. Next’s confirmed enterprise stack - Microsoft Azure, Tableau, Dynatrace, and Zendesk - is entirely non-Israeli.2829

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Next does not publicly disclose its full cybersecurity, endpoint-security, or store-surveillance vendor stack, which means an Israeli-origin security product cannot be positively excluded in those specific areas - an acknowledged evidence gap rather than a confirmed absence. Next is not connected to Israel’s Project Nimbus cloud programme, and no Israeli R&D centre, acquisition, or technology joint venture was identified.30 The one Israel-linked commercial thread in the broader record - Delta Galil’s Ted Baker underwear licence intersecting with Next’s separate Ted Baker retail relationship - is a textile manufacturing/licensing matter, not a technology relationship, and both companies’ Ted Baker arrangements lapsed after Ted Baker’s 2024 insolvency.12

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

Next plc does not appear in the OHCHR Database of Business Enterprises (158 entities as of September 2025, no UK apparel retailer listed), in the OHCHR Special Rapporteur’s “economy of occupation to economy of genocide” report, or in the Who Profits company database.91011 Its sole quantified Israel-facing commercial activity is the next.co.il online channel, estimated in 2016 press reporting at NIS 60–70 million in annual sales concentrated in infant and children’s clothing - a figure that at the time ranked Next among the top five online retailers used by Israeli consumers, but which has not been updated in any subsequent public disclosure.16 Next holds no disclosed foreign direct investment, R&D centre, or technology partnership in Israel or the OPT.

The most substantive documented economic thread is indirect: Next’s supply-chain licensing architecture intersects with Delta Galil Industries, an Israeli-listed apparel group whose subsidiary Delta Israel Brands operates retail branches in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and in East Jerusalem. This intersection runs through two structurally separate licences that happen to share the Ted Baker brand name (Delta Galil’s underwear/loungewear licence and Next’s own childrenswear licence) and through Next’s 51% joint-venture stake in Victoria’s Secret UK & Ireland, a global customer of Delta Galil’s Bogart Group subsidiary. No primary-source evidence establishes that Next directly procures from, or holds a contract with, Delta Galil itself.12

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

A characterisation circulating in third-party AI-search synthesis - that Next “rescued” a major Delta Galil client via the Victoria’s Secret joint venture, or that the Ted Baker licence gives Delta Galil control over Next-retailed goods - traces to a source (openintel.uk) that returned no retrievable content and could not be corroborated against any primary disclosure from Next, Victoria’s Secret, Ted Baker, or Delta Galil; this claim is treated as unverified and is not counted toward the score. Next’s disclosed manufacturing footprint (China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Turkey) does not include Israel, and no settlement-origin mislabeling, Israel/OPT-specific sourcing policy gap (beyond an acknowledged inability to fully text-extract Next’s Corporate Responsibility Report), or country-of-origin enforcement action was identified. Next’s institutional ownership (BlackRock, Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Legal & General, M&G, Schroders, Norges Bank) includes no Israeli-domiciled or Israel-focused capital.12 Next explicitly declined to open physical stores in Israel in 2016, and no subsequent evidence of a change in that posture was identified through 2025 - though that continuity is inferred from an absence of contrary reporting rather than from recent primary confirmation.1617

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of any Next plc corporate statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the 7 October 2023 attack, or the Gaza war; Next does not appear on the Yale School of Management list of companies condemning the Hamas attack, nor is it discussed in Al Jazeera’s survey of corporate responses.67 Next’s most substantive documented political-economic link to Israel runs through the controlling Wolfson family’s personal and charitable activity rather than Next plc as a corporate entity: Andrew Wolfson, brother of CEO Simon Wolfson, has chaired Beit Halochem UK (which supports disabled IDF veterans as the UK fundraising affiliate of Israel’s Zahal Disabled Veterans Organization) since 2018, and the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust - of which Simon Wolfson is a trustee - is listed as a Founder Benefactor of that charity.45 A separate Wolfson Family Charitable Trust, on which Simon Wolfson does not sit, has reportedly made grants to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Beit Halochem (Tel Aviv), though the currency of that grant level as of 2025–26 is unconfirmed.5

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The record documents a striking asymmetry: Next took a vocal, commercially concrete stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, closing its Russian and Ukrainian operations in 2022 at an estimated £85 million sales impact and appearing on the #LeaveRussia tracker - yet took no comparable public position on Israel/Gaza, continuing an unremarked online retail presence via next.co.il.82122 This is a documented gap in the record, not evidence of a pro-Israel corporate position; Next’s annual report and corporate-responsibility materials contain no language framing Israel as a strategic market or geopolitical partnership.12 Several claims advanced by activist sources do not survive verification: a claim that Simon Wolfson is a trustee of UK-AWIS (an Israeli-Defence-Ministry-linked charity under Charity Commission scrutiny) is contradicted by that charity’s own trustee register, which lists no Wolfson family member; and a claim that Wolfson sits on the board of the New Israel Fund was traced to its source and found to actually describe a different individual, Sir Jeremy Beecham, elevated to the Lords in the same peerage round.19 Wolfson Foundation philanthropy in Israel is characterised in the source record as scientific, medical, cultural and academic (Weizmann Institute, Wolfson Medical Center, Bar-Ilan University, the Israel Museum), with no grants to the IDF, FIDF, JNF, or settlement entities identified.4 Next plc itself does not appear on the Beit Halochem UK supporters list, on Ethical Consumer’s Palestine boycott list, or in any Who Profits, AFSC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Al-Haq, SOMO, or BankTrack company-specific investigation; it is named only on lower-provenance activist aggregators (Masjid Al-Aqsa, The Witness) whose stated rationale reduces to Wolfson-family philanthropy rather than any corporate transaction.263123

Named Entities and Evidence Map

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

DomainIMPV-Domain Score
Military0.000.000.000.00
Digital0.000.000.000.00
Economic4.003.004.501.10
Political6.003.505.502.36

The score is driven entirely by Political, the maximum domain (2.36), reflecting the documented - but family-level, not corporate - Wolfson philanthropic ties to IDF-welfare and Israeli cultural/medical causes, alongside the company’s silence on the Israel/Gaza conflict. Economic contributes the only other non-zero domain (1.10), reflecting the indirect Delta Galil licensing intersection and the small, online-only Israel retail channel. Military and Digital are both zero: rigorous checks across defence contracting, dual-use products, technology vendors, and surveillance/cloud relationships found no public evidence of any nexus. The resulting Tier E (Minimal) classification is consistent with a company whose Israel/Palestine exposure is narrow, indirect, and substantially mitigated by evidentiary caveats rather than confirmed direct dealings.

Methodology Note

End Notes

Footnotes

  1. https://fashionunited.com/news/business/ted-baker-signs-licensing-agreement-with-delta-galil/2018071622352 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  2. https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2024/05/14/ted-baker-closing-sale-bankruptcy-filing/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. https://www.thejc.com/community/lord-wolfsons-mission-to-feed-the-idf-lsyayrnk ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. https://www.wfct.org/grants-in-israel/wolfson-advisory-committee-israel/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  5. https://www.universityphilanthropy.com/funding-by-the-wolfson-foundation ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/10/13/after-outcry-over-ukraine-big-business-muted-on-israel-hamas-war ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. https://som.yale.edu/story/2023/list-companies-have-condemned-hamas-terrorist-attack-israel ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  8. https://www.scotsman.com/business/next-profits-leap-but-ukraine-crisis-to-knock-ps85-million-off-sales-reaction-3624752 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/un-human-rights-office-updates-database-businesses-involved-israeli ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  10. https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/all ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  11. https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/?keyword=Next ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  12. https://www.nextplc.co.uk/~/media/Files/N/next-plc-v4/about-next/annual-report-and-accounts-jan-2026.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  13. https://www.nextplc.co.uk/about-next/our-board ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  14. https://powerbase.info/index.php/Simon_Wolfson ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. https://xcdn.next.co.uk/PDFS/ModernSlaveryTransparency.pdf ↩ ↩2

  16. https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-uk-fashion-chain-next-mulls-opening-israeli-stores-1001093451 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  17. https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/374714/uks-next-chain-has-said-no-to-opening-stores-in-israel.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  18. https://www.sibat.mod.gov.il/Industries/directory/Pages/default.aspx ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  19. https://www.thejc.com/news/peerage-for-new-israel-fund-board-member-yekxsr3q ↩ ↩2

  20. https://ecommercedb.com/store/next.co.il ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  21. https://leave-russia.org/next ↩ ↩2

  22. https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2056889-next-withdraws-from-russia-as-operations-mothballed ↩ ↩2

  23. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethical-campaigns-boycotts/palestine-boycott-list ↩ ↩2

  24. https://www.just-style.com/news/next-accelerates-joules-transition-with-total-platform/ ↩

  25. https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/6347 ↩

  26. https://masjidalaqsa.com/boycott/next-plc-israel-bds ↩ ↩2

  27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wolfson,_Baron_Wolfson_of_Tredegar ↩ ↩2

  28. https://www.appsruntheworld.com/customers-database/customers/view/next-plc-united-kingdom ↩ ↩2

  29. https://www.zendesk.com/customer/next/ ↩ ↩2

  30. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-aws-win-12-billion-israel-nimbus-tender-for-cloud-services/ ↩

  31. https://boycott.thewitness.news/target/next ↩