Mike Ashley ‘offers Arcadia £50m’ as crows circle retail group
Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group is suggesting a £50m loan to keep Arcadia Group in business as the crows circle around the failing retail giant.
Plans for the emergency loan come as Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia prepares to call in administrators, according to Sky News. It would be one of the biggest corporate victims of the coronavirus pandemic.
Arcadia – which owns Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and other brands – has been hit hard by forced store closures. It also lacks the online footprint of many of its rivals.
Its stores in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are open but the bulk of its more than 500 sites remain closed due to the new lockdown in England. The further restrictions have been a big blow to the company.
Arcadia said on Friday that its board has “been working on a number of contingency options to secure the future of the group’s brands”.
Chris Wootton, Frasers Group’s chief financial officer, told Sky: “We hope that Sir Philip Green and the Arcadia Group will contact us today to discuss how we can support them and help save as many jobs as possible.”
Offer dismissed as ‘non-starter’
Someone with knowledge of the situation said that Arcadia had not been approached directly by Frasers.
They also said that any offer was a “non-starter”. The person highlighted that Ashley would need to gain the approval of the Arcadia pension scheme.
Ashley’s offer has the hallmark of tactics he has employed when attempting to take control of other businesses such as Debenhams.
It will stoke the personal animosity between the two retail tycoons, who fell out over the struggles at Debenhams. Ashley last year told The Times he would not buy “any part of Arcadia… for a pound”.