Argos Ltd, trading as Argos, is a British catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a subsidiary of Sainsbury's. The company trades both through physical shops and online, with over 845 retail shops, 29 million yearly shop customers, and nearly a billion online visitors per annum, making it one of the largest high street retailers in the United Kingdom. Argos was established on 13 November 1972, by Richard Tompkins, the founder of the Green Shield Stamps scheme, who rebranded the existing Green Shield Stamps catalogue shops as Argos, before opening new Argos-branded shops later in the year. BAT Industries purchased the company in 1979, and in 1990, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange, where it became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In April 1998, GUS plc bought the company, and it became part of Home Retail Group when GUS split in October 2006. In August 2013, it was estimated that 96% of the population of the United Kingdom was within 10 miles of an Argos branch. In April 2016, Argos' parent Home Retail Group agreed to a £1.4 billion takeover by the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's intend to close most if not all separate Argos shops and integrate them into its large Sainsbury's supermarkets. The acquisition was completed on 2 September 2016, and the business became part of a division named Sainsbury's Argos led by its own chief executive.