The group that owns Selfridges, Brown Thomas and Arnotts among other upmarket department stores has recorded a £124 million (€143.47 million) loss since it was set up just over a year ago.
Accounts filed at Companies House in the UK this week for Cambridge Retail Group Holding, which was incorporated on December 21st, 2021 as a vehicle for the acquisition of Selfridges Group, the owner of the various retailers, reported a £124 million pretax loss and revenues of £804 million during the period to January 28th, 2023.
Cambridge Retail is owned by René Benko’s Signa Group in Austria and Tiang Chirathivat’s Central Group in Thailand, which together bought the department store portfolio from the billionaire Weston family for £4 billion. This acquisition was completed in August 2022.
The published accounts include results from this date to the end of January for the retail operations of Selfridges in the UK, De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands, as well as Brown Thomas and Arnotts.
They also show that at the end of August 2023, the new owners replaced a €354 million loan from Julius Baer, Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, with a short-term shareholder loan of €364 million, of which €55 million was due at the end of last month. Julius Baer declined to comment.
The €354 million Julius Baer loan was initially extended for two weeks before it was refinanced. The €55 million chunk will be repaid during a flexible grace period, Selfridges Group said.
Companies House documents show that San Simeon Investments, a British Virgin Islands company owned by Central Group, arranged the shareholder loan.
Separately, Cambridge Retail said a restructuring consultation at Selfridges in the UK would conclude this month. This is expected to lead to dozens of redundancies. A reorganisation is also taking place in De Bijenkorf, according to the accounts, but the process “remains in the very early stages”. The group, which employs more than 3,000 people, declined to comment on redundancy numbers.
The holding company had total liabilities, including leases, of £3.4bn and total assets worth £3.8bn during the period.
Selfridges’ UK performance weighed on the other brands in the group. It posted a £106 million loss on revenues of £426 million from August 2022 to the end of January. De Bijenkorf recorded losses of £6.6 million on revenues of £224 million, while the Brown Thomas and Arnotts brands together reported a loss of £11.4 million on £153 million of revenues.
Annual accounts for Selfridges in the UK for the year to the end of January, covering previous and current ownership, showed losses of £37.9 million and revenues of £843 million. This compares with a pre-pandemic profit of £34 million and revenues of £853 million in the year to the start of February 2020.
Mr Benko has been under scrutiny in the past year after Signa’s offices were raided by Austrian police in October 2022 over a corruption investigation. No charges have yet been brought in the case. Benko was acquitted of bribery charges in a separate case in January. – The Financial Times Limited 2023
