Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group Makes £83 Million Offer for Handbag Maker Mulberry

Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has filed a possible £83 million offer to buy the luxury brand Mulberry as it expressed concerns about the future of the British handbag maker.

Frasers – the owner of Sports Direct, Evans Cycles, the House of Fraser department stores, the luxury streetwear chain Flannels and multiple brands from Slazenger to Jack Wills – already owns a 37 percent stake in Mulberry.

It said it was making an offer for the rest of the company after the luxury brand announced an emergency £10.75 million placing of shares to prop up the balance sheet late on Friday.

Mulberry had said it needed to raise cash after it fell to a £34 million pre-tax loss in the year to the end of March, from a £13 million profit a year before, after sales fell by 4 percent to £153 million. It added that sales were down by 18 percent for the 25 weeks since the period ended.

In a statement issued on Monday, Frasers said it would “not accept another Debenhams situation where a perfectly viable business is run into administration”. The statement refers to the collapse of the department store in 2019, wiping out shareholders such as Ashley’s retail group, which had ploughed £150 million into the business, including building up a near-30 percent stake.

The statement said the group “was not aware of the [planned cash raising by Mulberry] until immediately prior to its announcement” and would have been willing to underwrite it on better terms than those announced.

Mulberry’s share price, which stood at 125p on Friday before the announcement, recovered to 120p from 100p on Monday.

Ashley’s offer is 130p a share and is subject to a string of conditions – all of which it says are “waivable,” including the ditching of the planned share placement and full backing of the Mulberry board.

Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, suggested there could be “much emotion and potential shenanigans” as Frasers would be up against 56 percent shareholder Challice, controlled by the Singaporean entrepreneur Christina Ong.

“Quite whether the two large and dominating shareholders can come to an agreement will be at the heart of the next steps, we shall watch with interest,” Black wrote in a note.

Challice has pledged to underwrite the share placing, suggesting Ong is prepared to back the new chief executive, Andrea Baldo, who joined Mulberry on 1 September.

The former boss of the fashion label Ganni, who was previously involved in a turnaround at the Italian streetwear brand Diesel, took over from Thierry Andretta, who had led Mulberry since 2015 and led a push to take it upmarket.

Mulberry – founded in 1971 by the entrepreneur Roger Saul and his mother, Joan, and best known for its leather goods, particularly women’s handbags – has struggled to find a place in the luxury market amid heavy competition and the post-Brexit ending of shopping tax breaks for tourists to the UK.

By Sarah Butler

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