Despite positive news of retail chain Edinburgh Woollen Mill being sold, the company continues to shutdown more stores, although the potential buyer hasn’t been named. News reports suggest, hundreds of jobs could be rescued with administrator FRP Advisory having issued sale contracts to the potential buyer.
But despite this, it still seems only a small number of shops in the 400-store chain will continue. The company has already made around a third of the more-than-2,500 employees redundant since the EWM chain collapsed last November. The chain was the foundation of the larger EWM group built up by Philip Day. He also owned Peacocks, Bonmarché, Jaeger and Austin Reed and had a total empire of 1,100 stores.
The chain is now being picked apart with Jaeger reportedly set to be bought by M&S, although there is also little news that the Peacocks buyout plan led by its e-commerce chief has stalled. Day still has a big say in what happens to the various businesses having taken £140 million of security at group level that was previously held by Barclays Bank and cross-guaranteed by various group companies.
