Including Sainsbury’s £1.4bn acquisition of Home Retail Group being approved by competition authorities.
The Source rounds up some of the key retail stories of the week.
The £1.4 billion acquisition of Home Retail Group by Sainsbury’s has been approved by the competition authorities. The Competition and Markets Authority gave the acquisition the green light on Friday morning (July 22). The way is now clear for Sainsbury’s to complete the deal in early September.
A further 30 BHS stores will be closed by the end of July – these will include outlets in Bolton, Camberley, Crewe, Derby, Poole, Portsmouth, Salisbury and Weston Super Mare among others. More than 700 staff are likely to be affected. Administrator Duff & Phelps – which revealed the first 20 stores to close earlier this month – is continuing to seek a buyer for BHS.
Toy retailer The Entertainer is to open another two stores, taking its total to 126 throughout the UK. The new outlets will be in Bishop’s Stortford and Romford. They follow the retailer’s expansion into Northern Ireland with the recent opening in Belfast.
John Lewis saw sales rise 3.8% to £83.11 million in the week to July 16. Fashion was the best performing category, up 8.7%, while home sales increased 1.8% – however, within this, giftware soared by 135.5%.
The British Retail Consortium has appointed former Boots boss Richard Baker as its new chairman. He will take up the role on September 1.
The Cath Kidston brand will make its debut in India in the autumn with three new stores. The franchise outlets with Planet Retail Holdings will be located in Delhi and Mumbai.
Primark has opened a further two stores in the US, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Another five outlets are also in the pipeline in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.
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