The fashion brand Topshop, former flagship of the toppled UK high-street king Philip Green, has acquired a new “Scandinavian wardrobe”, says The Herald (Scotland). It has just been bought from Asos by Heartland, the investment company owned by Anders Holch Povlsen – the billionaire Danish rag-trader who has the singular claim of being both Denmark’s and Scotland’s richest person.
He appears to have picked up a bargain. The once high-flying Asos bought the Topshop and Topman brands from Green in 2021, in a package worth £235 million. Povlsen has paid just £135 million for a 75% stake. Still, as a 28% shareholder in Asos, he might argue he had little choice.
Shares in the online retailer have plummeted by more than 90% from their height in 2021. This deal will help keep it afloat. Asos reportedly turned down a higher offer from Shein, the Chinese fast-fashion giant, notes This is Money. A case, perhaps, of sticking with the nurse for fear of finding something worse.
MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Topshop certainly joins a thriving stable. The sole owner of the international clothes retailer Bestseller – founded in 1975 by his parents, Troels and Merete, in the small Danish town of Ringkøbing – Povlsen was just 28 when his father handed over the business. At 51, he now presides over a growing roster of brands, including Jack & Jones and Vero Moda, and is also a major stakeholder in the German firm Zalando and the Klarna payments service.
Still, in Britain he is probably best known as “Scotland’s biggest private landowner”, having amassed vast estates in the Highlands, says the BBC. “Like hundreds of thousands of other tourists”, Povlsen was “captivated by its rugged beauty” when he visited for an angling holiday with his parents in the 1980s. Two decades later, he returned – this time “wielding his chequebook rather than a fishing rod” – and bought the Glenfeshie Estate in the Cairngorms for £8 million.
It was the start of a buying spree that took in “huge swathes of the Scottish countryside”. By 2019, Povlsen and his wife Anne owned about 220,000 acres across 12 estates, stretching across Sutherland and the Grampian Mountains. Their lives changed forever in April 2018. During a holiday to Sri Lanka, three of the couple’s four children were killed in terror attacks targeting churches and luxury hotels in the country. The couple later “thanked the people of Scotland for their support” – a rare statement from a “private” tycoon who “rarely gives interviews”, says The Scotsman.
Will Anders Holch Povlsen revive Topshop?
As well as his Highland estates, Povlsen also owns the historic Jenners building on Edinburgh’s Princes Street – once one of the world’s oldest department stores – and has plans to transform it into a shopping destination, with food and drink outlets and a “boutique hotel”. That’s where Topshop might come in handy, says The Herald. As Susannah Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown points out: “This Scandi makeover could potentially herald a much bigger return of Topshop and Topman to bricks-and-mortar stores around the world” – a dream Philip Green never realised. Somewhere in Monaco, the former Topshop boss must be spinning on his yacht.
This article was first published in MoneyWeek's magazine. Enjoy exclusive early access to news, opinion and analysis from our team of financial experts with a MoneyWeek subscription.
-
How inheritance tax trick is helping families save ‘six-figure sums’Happy to skip a generation to save thousands on inheritance tax? A deed of variation could be the estate planning tool you need.
-
Nationwide: House prices unexpectedly dropped in AugustHouse prices fell by 0.1% in August in a surprise drop, according to Nationwide, as “affordability remains stretched”
-
The financial crisis in UK universities – what can be done?UK universities are running out of cash and have begun to shed staff; bankruptcies look likely. What’s gone wrong, and what should be done about it?
-
'Governments are launching an assault on the independence of central banks'Opinion Say goodbye to the era of central bank orthodoxy and hello to the new era of central bank dependency, says Jeremy McKeown
-
Why investors can no longer trust traditional statistical indicatorsOpinion The statistical indicators and data investors have relied on for decades are no longer fit for purpose. It's time to move on, says Helen Thomas
-
The most likely outcome of the AI boom is a big fallOpinion Like the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, AI is not paying off – despite huge investments being made in the hope of creating AI-based wealth
-
The rise of Robin Zeng: China’s billionaire battery kingRobin Zeng, a pioneer in EV batteries, is vying with Li Ka-shing for the title of Hong Kong’s richest person. He is typical of a new kind of tycoon in China
-
How retail investors can gain exposure to Lloyd’s of LondonIt’s hard for retail investors to get in on the action at Lloyd’s of London. Here are some of the ways to gain exposure
-
The goal of business is not profit, but virtueOpinion Serve your customers well, and the profits will follow, according to a new book. It rarely works the other way around, says Stuart Watkins
-
Earnings estimates are a rigged game – especially in the USThe number of US stocks beating earnings estimates tells us only that guidance has deliberately been set too low
