Liberty department store in �35m takeover talks

By Amy Wilson 537PM GMT twelve March 2010

The Liberty dialect store"s important mock-tudor extraneous

The association voiced last month the programmed sale and leaseback of the important mock-Tudor construction on Great Marlborough Street, with agents putting a �40m cost tab on the property.

Now talks with in isolation equity and genuine estate investors have thrown up the probability of offered the total business. The frontrunner is thought to be BlueGem Capital, a in isolation equity organisation run by former Merrill Lynch landowner Marco Capello.

Debenhams The high travel name with a outrageous raise of debt Newspaper round-up Dec fourteen Budget 2009 The high travel is in need of a little sell care Banks eyes Thomas Cook fixation Liberty undergoes vital examination to capture partners for tellurian enlargement

Liberty"s determining shareholder, the skill association MWB Group, relaunched the store and the Liberty code in Feb last year, and has been looking new investors given the summer to account enlargement abroad.

"Over the past 6 months Liberty has been examining and assessing a range of options and initiatives that would capacitate it to set up on the success given the launch of the Renaissance of Liberty in Feb 2009," the association said.

Richard Balfour-Lynn, arch senior manager of MWB, pronounced he was gratified with the turn of seductiveness being shown by intensity investors, and put it down to the new success of Liberty, that reported a 20pc sales climb in 2009 notwithstanding the consumer spending downturn. However, the last annual results, that came out in Apr 2009, showed a loss of �7m

As well as the flagship dialect store, Liberty sells own-branded products online and has a indiscriminate fabric business. Liberty is important for the floral prints.

Other intensity bidders embody Robert Bensoussan, the oppulance investor, and Li & Fung, the Hong Kong-based sell supplier, it was reported.

Liberty"s shares jumped twenty to 295p yesterday, receiving the marketplace worth to �66.7m.

MWB is being suggested by Cavendish and Global Leisure Partners.

The Liberty store"s singular ridicule Tudor front is done from beams from the warships HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan.