Thai conglomerate to buy UK department store Selfridges for 4 billion

LONDON, England - A Thai conglomerate, The Central Group, is set to buy luxury UK department store group Selfridges for up to 4 billion.

Selfridges has 25 outlets, including its flagship store in London's Oxford Street, as well as branches in Dublin, the Netherlands and Canada.

The Weston family, which has Selfridges, agreed to sell terms with the Thai group in the last few days, according to the Times, the first to report the sale.

Selfridges, founded in 1908 by U.S. retail magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, has been owned by the billionaire Westons, one of Canada's richest families, and was put up for sale in June, a few months after the death of Galen Weston, who ran the privatization of the store in 2003.

Thai Central Group is a family-owned conglomerate with 3,700 shops around the world, from supermarkets to electronics outlets, as well as department stores in Europe.

Central Group opened Thailand's first department store in 1956, opening Thailand's first department store in Bangkok.

Vittorio Radice, the non-executive director of the group responsibile for expansion in Europe, ran Selfridges between 1996 and 2003 and has since managed a department store in Italy.

A subsidiary of the group, Central Retail, caused confusion about whether a Selfridges sale had fallen through when it issued a short stock exchange announcement that it was not currently involved with a purchase.

However, the Westons are reported to be in talks with a different arm of the group, though it is not known why the family decided to sell.

More recent figures show a drop in revenues, as Selfridges announced sales of almost 2 billion this year, up through February 2020.