The consortium between Next and Davidson Kemper Capital Management have withdrawn from the bidding to acquire Arcadia Group from administration.
Arcadia Group’s administrators Deloitte asked interested parties, of which Next and Davidson Kemper were a frontrunner to submit bids for the whole company or individual brands by the end beginning of this week.
With other bidders including Boohoo, ASOS, Authentic Brands Group in partnership with JD Sports and a late bidder of Shein, who offered well over £300M for Topshop and Topman, Next has commented that it was ‘unable to meet the price expectations of the vendor’.
Topshop is considered to be Arcadia’s flagship brand and it was expected to sell for around £200M.
Earlier this week it was announced that more than 24 stores Arcadia stores were expected to close by the end of the month, with around 700 staff expected to lose their jobs as part of this process.
