Michelle Mone, Baroness Mone

Michelle Georgina Mone, Baroness Mone, (née Allan; born October 1971) is a Scottish businesswoman and life peer.

Born in October 1971, Michelle Allan grew up in Glasgow's East End.

She recounted how she had lived with her family in a one-bedroom house with no bath or shower until she was 10 years old.

She also told of how her younger brother, who had spina bifida, died at the age of eight, when she was 10 years old, and that her father, who was suffering from cancer, lost the use of his legs when she was 15.

She left school aged 15, with no qualifications, to pursue a modelling career.

Mone obtained a marketing job with the Labatt brewing company and, within two years, had risen to become its head of marketing in Scotland.

She has since said that she invented qualifications to help get the job there.

She was then made redundant by the company, prompting her, at the age of 23, to set up her own business using the redundancy compensation she received from Labatt.

She has set up several businesses, including MJM International Ltd in 1996 and the lingerie company Ultimo along with her then husband Michael Mone.

Other ventures include naturopathic 'weight-loss' pills, and a fake tan product via Ultimo Beauty.

In November 1996, Mone founded MJM International with her then-husband Michael.

In August 1999, Mone launched the Ultimo lingerie brand at Selfridges department store in London.

Mone came up with the idea for the Ultimo bra, the brand's first product, when she was wearing an uncomfortable cleavage-enhancing bra one day and believed she could create a more comfortable cleavage-enhancing bra.

Mone had read about a new silicone product while on holiday in Florida and approached the company to obtain its European licence to produce bras.

Mone has claimed that an Ultimo bra was worn by Julia Roberts in the Hollywood film Erin Brockovich, but this was denied by the film's creators.

Ultimo went on to include other products, such as backless dresses and shapewear, which led to MJM International's growth.

In 2006 MJM formed a joint venture with de Vries, taking a 50% share in the product.

Mone claimed that exercise and reduced calorific intake had no effect on her weight and credited TrimSecrets pills for her weight loss.

Mone falsely claimed the efficacy of the product had been proven in clinical trials.

However, when questioned further, she said that approximately 60 users had completed a questionnaire but was unable to produce the results.

Mone left MJM International briefly in 2013 following the breakdown of her relationship with her then husband.

The business assets were transferred to its parent firm, Ultimo Brands International Ltd, in a partnership with MAS Holdings.

MJM International was then dissolved.

In November 2014, Mone sold 80% of her stake in Ultimo Brands International to MAS Holdings.

In 2014, a former operations director for MJM won a claim for unfair dismissal from her company after discovering that Mone had authorised electronic bugging of his office.

Mone threatened to sue her critics when it was revealed her company MJM International had paid a substantial sum of money into a controversial tax avoidance scheme, criticised by Chancellor George Osborne as "morally repugnant".

Mone became a Conservative life peer in 2015.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mone's husband's company, PPE Medpro was awarded £200m of contracts to provide PPE by the UK government.

The company made a profit of £60m and some of the products they provided were defective and went unused.

Following a test case brought by HMRC against Rangers Football Club, the scheme utilising an employee benefit trust (the type of tax avoidance scheme used by MJM International) was exposed as ineffective in November 2015.

Mone said she had "not done anything wrong" in relation to tax avoidance and that her ex-husband had "dealt with all the finance".

In August 2015, Mone resigned her directorships of both MJM and Ultimo, saying she had sold 80% of the latter.

TrimSecrets were weight loss pills formulated by the “naturopath” Jan de Vries.

The product also used diet and exercise advice.

From 2020 to 2023, Mone vehemently denied that she or her husband had any involvement with the contracts.

In January 2022 The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and National Crime Agency launched investigations into Mone's links to the contracts.

Mone announced in December that year that she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords "to clear her name" amid the allegations.

Shortly afterwards the UK government announced plans to sue PPE Medpro for £122 million plus costs over the defective items.

In December 2023, Mone disclosed that she had been involved with PPE Medpro and said she had previously denied it to protect her family.

In February 2024, a leak revealed that five months prior to £29 million of PPE Medpro's profits being transferred into a trust that Mone would benefit from, she assured the government that she wouldn't gain "any financial benefit whatsoever", and that there were "no conflicts whatsoever" with regard to the company she had recommended to the government.