Online retailer Boohoo swoops on high street icon Karen Millen

The changing face of British retailing will be underlined on Tuesday, when Boohoo Group, the wildly successful online-only fashion business, swoops to buy Karen Millen, one of the high street’s best-known names.

It is understood that Boohoo, which owns a controlling stake in PrettyLittleThing, is in advanced talks to buy Karen Millen and sister brand Coast through an insolvency process known as a pre-pack administration.

A transaction had yet to be signed late on Monday evening, and people close to the process warned that it could yet be abandoned.

However, a deal is expected to be concluded following the appointment of Deloitte as administrator to Karen Millen.

If completed, it would come after a six-week sale process in which the retailer’s management and advisers attempted to strike a solvent sale.

Sources said on Monday night that the brutal conditions in Britain’s retail industry had made a pre-pack deal – through which some of the company’s financial liabilities are left behind – unavoidable.

AIM-listed Boohoo’s acquisition of Karen Millen and Coast secures a potentially bright future for the two women’s fashion brands.

The company owns brands including its own boohoo label, Nasty Gal and MissPap.

The purchase of Coast and Karen Millen, however, by an online-only retailer will cast doubt about the future of hundreds of retail jobs at a time when tens of thousands more are facing the axe.

Together, Karen Millen and Coast employ approximately 1100 people, trading from more than 30 standalone stores and 175 concessions in the UK.

One retail analyst said on Monday that it was “inevitable” that the stores would face closure with the loss of most of the company’s workforce.

Such an outcome would inflict further pain on stakeholders throughout the retail sector, including high street landlords who in recent months have been forced to accept steep rent cuts at some of the sector’s biggest names.

Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, the owner of Top Shop, Debenhams and Monsoon Accessorize have turned to creditors to strike compromises on store closures and rent reductions in a desperate survival bid.

Karen Millen, which was founded by the eponymous entrepreneur more than 30 years ago, will become the latest in a series of big fashion names to be forced into insolvency.

Also revealed is that the tycoon Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct International would buy Jack Wills through a pre-pack process.

The deal, which cost Mr Ashley’s company less than £13m, was confirmed on Monday.

Earlier this year, LK Bennett, founded by the businesswoman Linda Bennett, was sold to its Chinese franchisee following several weeks in administration.

Karen Millen and Coast are being sold by Kaupthing, one of the ‎Icelandic banks that collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis.

One of the most prominent fashion brands in the UK, Karen Millen has a surprisingly large international footprint with a presence in about 50 international markets, including Australia, France, Spain and the US.

The company, which snapped up the Coast brand from administrators last year, recorded sales of £162m in the year to February 2018, up from £158.8m the year before.

It recorded an operating loss of £1.4m last year – an improvement on the prior year’s performance.

The retailer is run by Beth Butterwick, a former‎ executive at Bonmarche, and chaired by Neil McCausland, who has held directorships at retailers such as Kurt Geiger and Snow and Rock.

The founder of the Karen Millen brand‎ is no longer involved with the business, which was founded during the 1980s.

Ms Millen captured a growing share of a market focused on designer-lookalike fashions, riding a wave with her business partner and eventually selling out to Oasis in 2004 for close to £100m.

She was regarded as one of the most talented fashion retailers of her generation.

Further changes of the business bearing her name ensued, ‎but Ms Millen was declared bankrupt in 2017 following heavy losses connected to the failure of Kaupthing more than a decade ago.

She also ‎fought a legal battle to regain the right to use her name on new clothing designs.

Karen Millen’s Icelandic owner also counts the Oasis and Warehouse brands among its assets, although these are not part of the pre-pack sale to Boohoo.

The AIM-listed retailer’s purchase of Karen Millen and Coast will reinforce both the residual appeal of those brands and also the shifting balance of power in a retail industry beset by structural change.

Boohoo, which was set up in 2006 by Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane, now has a market value of £2.6bn, making it two-thirds the size of Marks & Spencer.

Spokespeople for Boohoo, Karen Millen and Deloitte all declined to comment.

East Anglian SMEs move from mainstream banks to alternative funding

Growth Street, who are transforming the business overdraft, are currently providing just under £7.5m of overdraft-style credit lines for growing businesses in East Anglia.

It bucks the national trend which, since the financial crash in 2008, has seen the banks dial back the amount they lend to SMEs in overdrafts by 50%. Yet, in that same time, the number of UK SMEs has risen 30%.

Across the East of England, Growth Street has identified a funding gap of over £1.5bn due to the banks’ increasing reluctance to extend overdrafts to small firms.

To help plug that gap, the overdraft-style provider has committed to channelling £75m to East Anglian SMEs, and they are already 10% of the way there.

One of the SMEs to have benefited from the firm’s new take on the overdraft is Cambridgeshire’s own Lunchtime Company, who found themselves with a squeeze on their cash flow that the banks weren’t willing to support them with.

As a provider of school lunches, the Lunchtime Company unsurprisingly experiences a lull in their cash flow over the summer break. However, it’s during this slowdown in demand for their meals that the business also looks to invest to be ready for the new academic year.

To fill the hole, the firm initially applied for an overdraft from the bank. They are a strong business, with long periods of six-figure payments throughout the year, a sound balance sheet and a profitable trading history. However, due to the seasonal nature of their trade, the bank was still unwilling to extend them the money they needed.

Andy Phillips, Growth Street’s East Anglia representative said, “To have already agreed just under £7.5m of funding lines for East Anglian SMEs is a great start, but there’s still a long way to go to plug the gap left by the banks”

“As someone who has been supporting SMEs in East of England since the late 1970s, I’ve seen first-hand how the banks have stopped offering overdrafts of any great value. When I started out in business finance, the banks would have been more than happy to extend a good business-like Lunchtime with a big overdraft, but that’s not how things are anymore.”

“That’s why I joined Growth Street: to deliver the time-tested, overdraft-style facility that SMEs need, but with modern tech to bring it into the 21st century.”

Metro Bank chairman Vernon Hill stands down as bank looks to settle ship

Metro Bank’s woes were laid bare today after the troubled high street lender posted a downbeat financial performance and called time on its colourful founder’s role as chairman.

The under-fire challenger bank reported a sharp drop in profits for the six months to 30 June as it counted the costs of a major balance sheet blunder which rocked investor and customer confidence.

Pre-tax profits hit £3.4m in the first half of 2019, plummeting from £20.8m a year earlier. Customers also withdrew £2bn of deposits.

Vernon Hill, (pictured) the 73-year-old American billionaire who founded the self-styled ‘dog-friendly high street bank’, also confirmed his plans last night to leave his role as chairman as part of a management shake-up.

The hunt for Hill’s successor begins amid a flurry of new appointments that the firm has made in recent days, as it looks to bolster its senior ranks in the wake of its recent crisis.

“Vernon’s concluded that with where we are with our national growth, and where we are with regards to the longevity of the organisation, that he’s stepping down,” chief executive Craig Donaldson told the Press Association.

“Vernon is the founder and the visionary. We’ve created 4,000 jobs because of his vision.”

This week’s reshuffle is the first since the firm worried the City in January by slashing its growth plans and revealing an accountancy error in which some loans had been classified as less risky than they were.

Metro Bank’s share price has crashed more than 75 per cent since the revelation, which prompted fears of a regulatory crackdown and wider questions over the lender’s business model.

“We’ve faced more challenges in the first half of this year than we’ve ever faced,” said Donaldson. He said Metro wanted to “draw a line” under events in May when intense speculation about the bank’s future led to £1.4bn of outflows.

After the exodus the lender asked investors to stump up £375m as part of an emergency cash call to shore up its finances.

The company’s share price edged down four per cent today as investor caution mounted in the hours ahead of the firm’s results, which were released after trading closed

‘Bank on Dave’ moves step closer to realising dream of being first UK-owned High Street bank in 120 years

Business champion Burnley Savings and Loans Limited (“BSAL”), also known as “Bank on Dave!”, has taken another step towards becoming the first UK owned high-street bank in 120 years and today are announcing a £2.5 million funding round on equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs.

BSAL was established in 2011 by local millionaire businessman Dave Fishwick in the wake of the financial crash and the devastation it left across the North of England.  As a man passionate about his hometown of Burnley, Dave wanted to set up his own business in Lancashire to help inject much-needed support into local community and businesses, and to prove that financial service providers can be socially responsible.

BSAL seeks to respond to the significant market need from SMEs and individuals who may have difficulty or are unable to access credit from mainstream high street financial companies. One of the driving aims of the Company is to lend responsibly, therefore providing the customer with greater opportunity to control their debt, which in turn will help support an improved credit rating in the future.

Over the past 7 years, the Company has seen that customers seeking a modest loan may in the future turn into a customer that wishes to borrow a much larger amount to support their business’s growth, therefore creating a compelling ‘feeder’ acquisition strategy for the Company. 

Dave wants to put the trust, ethics and best-practice back into banking, treating customers as individuals and valued clients. Creating a bank that is an institution from the community, for the community.  

Having already lent nearly £20 million to over 3,000 qualifying borrowers across the UK, the Company is now seeking to grow its reach by becoming an authorised UK bank, which will be called “Bank of Dave”. To do achieve this, BSAL is launching their fundraising round on Seedrs to support the procurement of the IT systems needed in preparation for its bank license application. 

Burnley Savings and Loans Founder, Dave Fishwick said: “The core vision for Bank of Dave is to be the ethical choice provider of loans and savings products to honest hard-working families, helping every generation to grow their business and to save for the future.

We have had brilliant few years acting as a savings and loans provider, but the opportunity to become a fully authorised UK bank will expand our horizons even further, enabling us to help more people around the UK.

We are delighted to be launching our first ever funding round on Seedrs, giving our hundreds of thousands of amazing supporters a chance to share in the first new UK-owned high street bank in over a century.”

CEO James Bradley commented: “We are going through the authorisation process to become a bank and are advancing towards our goal of becoming an authorised UK bank. We continue to witness a real market demand for financial providers that offer essential banking services to customers that traditionally found it difficult or have been unable to access affordable credit. We are confident that once fully authorised that the Bank of Dave will be the bank that delivers this capability.”

For more information, visit: www.seedrs.com/bankondave

5 best must-visit Oxford Street London attractions

Oxford Street has been one of the main arteries pulsing through the heart of London’s West End for centuries, and its origins can be dated all the way back to Roman times.

The 1.5mile-Long Street stretches from Tottenham Court Road station to the east and Marble Arch station to the west.

It used to be called Tyburn Road during the middle ages and was the main road leading from London to Oxford.

There are a lot of places in London near Oxford Street, which may interest you. As the oxford street is known for shopping and the flagship stores, it also has some places which are visited by the tourist while shopping from Oxford Street.

As you will be there for visiting you need to find a fitting place to stay, which is modern yet feels like home. M by Montcalm is one of the best hotels to stay at when visiting London. M is Montcalm’s spirited younger sibling, same DNA, but different personality.

These are the 5 places you must visit near Oxford Street

HYDE PARK

Hyde Park is located in Central London. It is the largest of four Royal Parks, and it is worth a visit. It also forms a chain from the entrance of Kensington Palace which runs through the Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, via Hyde Park Corner and Green Park past the main entrance to Buckingham Palace.

The park has Serpentine and the Long Water lakes as well. HydePark is 2-3 minutes’ walk from the oxford street which can be visited if you want to rest after the long shopping spree you just had at Oxford Street.

PRINCESS DIANA MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN

Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain which is also known as the Diana, is a memorial in London dedicated to Princess. She died in a car accident in the year 1997. The park was made to express her spirit and love for the children.

The fountain is located in the southwest corner of Hyde Park, just south of the Serpentine Lake and east of the Serpentine Gallery. Its cornerstone was laid on September 2003, and it was officially opened on 6 July 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II.

Diana’s younger brother Charles Spencer, her ex-husband Prince Charles, and her sons William and Harry were present at the opening of the fountain. The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain is about 2 miles from the oxford street, which may take 10-11 minutes to reach there.

SPEAKERS’ CORNER

It is typically an area where open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are conducted. It is also considered as the only original, and most noted is in the northeast corner of Hyde Park in London.

Some of the other areas in London were also designated as Speakers’ Corners which included Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Finsbury Park, Clapham Common, Kennington Park, and Victoria Park. This corner was set up to show and demonstrate the need for freedom of speech.

PHOTOGRAPHERS’ GALLERY

It is the first public gallery in the UK which is devoted solely to photography. It was founded in the year 1971. The Photographers’ Gallery is about 1 mile far from Oxford Street; you can go there via St George Street, which will take about 5-7 minutes.

MADAME TUSSAUDS

Madame Tussauds is a wax museum in London; it has smaller museums in several other major cities. Wax sculptor Marie Tussaud founded it. It had a different spellbind and used to be spelled as “Madame Tussaud’s”; the apostrophe is no longer used. Madame Tussauds is very famous and is visited by a lot of tourists every year.

It showcases the waxworks of famous and historical figures, which includes popular movie and television characters. Madame Tussauds is about 1.5 miles away from Oxford Street. You can travel to this wax museum via Oxford St/A40 and Gloucester Pl/A41, and it would take about 8-10 minutes.

CONCLUSION

These are the 5 places you must visit while you are at Oxford Street. You can make your shopping trip an educational trip as well and why not roam the places nearby when you are visiting a different country. London is truly a traveler’s delight.