Asos buys Miss Selfridge and Topshop brands for £265m: Online-only deal means another 70 store closures and 2,500 redundancies
Asos shares soared as investors toasted the £295million purchase of the Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge brands from Arcadia following the collapse of Sir Philip Green’s empire.
The online retailer has not bought any of the stores, forcing administrators Deloitte to announce another 70 closures and 2,500 redundancies.
A further 10,000 job losses and 324 store closures are expected at Arcadia if Boohoo’s exclusive talks for Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Wallis result in a deal.
Asos shares soared seven per cent soared after the online retailer announced it had bought the Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge brands from Arcadia in a £265m deal
The Asos takeover hands its top investor Anders Holch Povlsen, who owns a 26 per cent stake through his retail empire Bestseller, a share in more major European brands.
The Danish billionaire already owns part of the ‘German Asos’ Zalando, consumer credit giant Klarna and eight fashion brands including Jack & Jones, which is sold via Asos.
The 48-year-old, who owns a series of Scottish estates making him the UK’s largest private landowner, has been the most significant beneficiary from Asos’s growth in the pandemic.
The Asos takeover hands its top investor Anders Holch Povlsen (pictured), who owns a 26 per cent stake through his retail empire Bestseller, a share in more major European brands
News of the deal pushed the share price up 7 per cent, or 310p, to 4784p, up from 1,030p in April 2020, putting the value of Povlsen’s stake to £1.2billion.
Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge have a combined 3.3m customers and received more than 200m visits to their websites in the last year.
Bosses said the deal is expected to deliver a double-digit return on capital in the first year, and is part of their strategy for the Asos website to become a one-stop shop for consumers aged 16 to 34.