South African billionaire Christo Wiese sets up British shell company for a UK assault - but will he go for BHS?
South African retail billionaire Christo Wiese has set up a British shell company to prepare to launch a series of takeovers of stores groups.
The company, Pepkor UK, is named after Wiese’s retail investment group Pepkor which owns leading retail chains across the globe.
He is also executive chairman at African retail giant Shoprite which employs around 100,000 people.
Shopping: Christo Wiese is set to launch a series of takeovers of stores groups
The British operation is being headed by former Asda boss Andy Bond and his business partner Mark Elliott.
The heightened activity has ignited speculation that Bond and Wiese may be nearing a decision over whether to make an audacious approach to Sir Philip Green for his BHS department store chain.
Wiese, who is worth almost £2billion, admitted in November that he was examining the possibility of buying BHS. His interest was first revealed by The Mail on Sunday.
The team led by Bond is also understood to be examining a number of possibilities in the UK clothing market that involve smaller chains.
In recent weeks, Bond’s team is thought to have begun setting up a management infrastructure and to be actively working on detailed plans to buy assets.
Any acquired chains would be reversed into the Pepkor UK shell and would then become part of the wider Pepkor network which extends from South Africa to Nigeria, Australia and Poland.
Bond, who was credited with expanding Asda’s George clothing business, is hoping to utilise Pepkor’s group enormous buying power to be able to price goods competitively in the UK’s notoriously tough retail sector.
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