Thai, Austrian alliance buys Selfridges for $5 billion
Ownership of Selfridges, the luxury British store chain, has changed from the Canadian wing of the billionaire Weston family as it is being sold to a Thai retailer and an Austrian property company for 4 billion ($5.37 billion). Thailand’s Central Group and Austrian real estate company Signa Group, which already jointly own major department stores across Europe, said on Thursday they had struck a deal for the chain best known for its Oxford Street store in London.
Central Group, owned by the billionaire Chirathivat family, and Austrian investor Rene Benko’s Signa together own department stores in Germany, Italy, Denmark, and Switzerland.
Founded in 1908, the Selfridges Group employs 10,000 people and owns 25 stores worldwide, including in major cities in England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Canada.
Signa and Central will take over 18 of the 25 stores and hope to build a luxury hotel alongside the Oxford Street flagship, the source said, adding that seven department stores in Canada were not part of the package. With Selfridges, they hope to build a luxury department store empire, complemented by an online business.
The source said they plan to increase sales to 8 billion euros ($9.1 billion) by 2024 – including more than 1 billion online – from around 5 billion now.
The conglomerate will be managed from a holding company in London, with the potential for an eventual stock exchange listing, although local management of the stores in other countries will remain, the source said.
Central opened its first department store in 1956, growing to become Thailand’s largest mall owner with about 2,400 retail stores. It has an e-commerce joint venture with China’s JD.com (9618. HK) and stakes in Southeast Asia ride-hailer Grab Holdings. It came to Europe in 2011 when it bought the upmarket Italian department store chain La Rinascente SpA for 205 million euros. In 2013, it also acquired Illum, Denmark’s oldest department store.
In 2015, Central bought a majority stake in three luxury department stores in Germany from Signa. Central and Signa last year together bought Swiss luxury store Globus and other assets for more than 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.1 billion). They have also teamed up with Japanese retail giant Aeon Co to develop an e-commerce platform for one of the fastest growing online sports retail markets in the world.
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