The son of a butcher, Johnson helped run a family-owned business Park Foods, a supplier of Christmas hampers in the early 1990s.
By the early 1990s, Birkenhead based Park Foods had made Johnson one of the UK's richest people, with an estimated fortune of £150 million[citation needed].
At its peak, Park Foods packed 1m Christmas hampers and delivered them to people who had saved up to £5 a week all year[citation needed].
[citation needed] In October 2004, Johnson put the group valued at around £49 million up for sale, after the failure of both the flavoured crisp and door-step loan businesses.
Tranmere qualified for the new Division One playoffs three seasons running in the 1990s, but failed to win promotion to the FA Premier League.
[5] His ownership of Everton saw the club win the FA Cup in 1995 and finish sixth in Premier League a year later, as well as making expensive signings including Andrei Kanchelskis and Gary Speed, but they also came close to being relegated in 1998.
In accordance with this, Johnson agreed to sell shares in one club by 1998, and resultantly appointed his then girlfriend Lorraine Rogers[6][7] to look after his interests at Tranmere.
[11] In summer 2006, Tranmere revealed accounts which showed the club owed Johnson £6 million, and had plans to sell-off their second training ground at Ingleborough Road as a residential development.