This promises to be a more difficult business week than usual for Lord Harris of Peckham. As chairman and chief executive of Carpetright, he is likely to face questions at the annual meeting this week from investors looking for an update on his plans to take the chain private.

In June, Lord Harris confirmed that he was thinking about taking the group private, sending the shares to £12.45 and valuing the group at £850 million. With the debt market crisis affecting funding and Lord Harris keeping tight-lipped, Wednesday’s meeting will pile pressure on him to clarify his intentions. The shares are trading now at £11.93.

This month Lord Harris celebrates 50 years as a carpet salesman, after starting in the business at 15. It is thought that he wants to hand over Carpetright to his son Martin, but it is not clear that the board would back such a move - hence his thoughts about buying up the 75 per cent of Carpetright that he does not own. Carpetright was created by Lord Harris in 1988 after Harris Queensway, a company that he had led since 1964, was taken over in a highly leveraged hostile bid that eventually saw the chain go bust.

Harris Queensway has grown from a family shop in Peckham, South London, where Philip Harris, as he was then, was forced to work just after his 15th birthday. An only child, he had been due to begin a business studies course when his father died of cancer and he ran the shop to help his mother, who, three years later, also died of cancer.

After the expansion and eventual demise of Harris Queensway, which had become a 1,600-strong chain, Lord Harris began Carpetright. In 1988, it started as one store in Canning Town, East London, with a warehouse in Barking.

Two years later, semi-automatic cutting tables were installed in a nearby warehouse, enabling the firm to provide 1,000 cuts of carpet a week, leading to the expansion of Carpetright to 71 stores. It now has more than 500 stores.

Lord Harris was a nonexecutive director of Great Universal Stores for 18 years, retiring in 2004 to join Matalan as a nonexecutive. He has backed the Conservative Party consistently, his donations reaching £500,000 a year. But he is a greater supporter of charitable causes, giving 20 per cent of his income to medical and educational institutions and other charitable work. Several departments of acadamies, schools and hospitals, especially in South London, bear his name.

He had planned to let go of the chairman’s role last year and remain as chief executive. Now he thinks it is more likely that he will remain as chairman and appoint one of his team as chief executive. It remains to be seen whether this will happen in the near future. Interested parties will be hoping for clues on Wednesday.

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