The Rank Group and Rank España in Spain (10 bingo clubs). Rank is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The company was formed to acquire the business interests of the Rank Organisation, which itself was formed out of the business interests of its founder, J. Arthur Rank. Until the start of the 21st century, the group still had a tremendous amount of leisure holdings; however, as the decade progressed it divested these interests, beginning with Pinewood Studios and the Odeon cinema chain. It also shed its engineering interests, such as its share in Rank
Shepperton Studios The studios, which produced both short and feature films, quickly became successful and expanded rapidly. Proximity to the Vickers-Armstrongs aircraft factory at Brooklands, which attracted German bombers, disrupted filming during the Second World War, as did the requisitioning of the studios in 1941 by the government, who first used it for sugar storage and later to create decoy aircraft and munitions for positioning in the Middle East. The Ministry of Aircraft Production also took over part of the studios for the production of Vickers Wellington bomber components early in the war. After re-opening in 1945, the studios changed hands. When