Iconic Liberty selling its Freehold

One of my all-time favourite “window-shopping” destinations is Liberty of London - the iconic fashion and lifestyle department store on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Regent Street, in central London.  The wooden beams and panelling and ornate decorations inside the Tudor building are superb backdrops for showing off  “investment” fashion.  Just as I can’t see myself ever able to acquire a building as iconic as this to live in, I can’t see myself ever able to buy a £995 floral collage dress by Michael Van Der Ham, or a £865 silk paiseley dress by Etro, or (the list is too long to put down here … but you get the picture) on sale in Liberty. But whenever I am in the area I will try to head inside the Tudor building for a bit of re-charge and a quick dose of inspiration. Going through its maze-like shopping floors is almost as adventurous as Alice in Wonderland.
Liberty’s125,000sq ft of retail space are stocked with many desirabe designer labels, from Preen to Stella McCartney and McQueen, but with sky-high prices beyond most fashionistas reach, business at this iconic store has been reportedly difficult.
I am writing this today because I’ve just learned, as reported by Bloomberg, that Liberty is close to selling its freehold in a sale-and-leaseback deal in a move set to precede a sale of the operating business.  According to a statement from Liberty, it has exchanged contracts on the sale of the freehold store for £41.5m to Sirosa Liberty.  The retailer, which is 68% owned by hotel and property group MWB Group Holdings, is expected to announce the sale of its operating business in the next fortnight to Marco Capello, the former managing director of Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity, via his investment fund BlueGem Capital Partners.  It was six months ago that Liberty started a strategic review and decided to look for new investors, and had reportedly lured interest from the Robert Bensoussan, the former chief executive of Jimmy Choo and founder of Sirius Equity, and Hong Kong trading company Li & Fung.
Long before I moved to the UK, I had known Liberty for its archive of iconic heritage prints, now still being sold.  Years ago after visiting London, I returned home to Hong Kong and gave my mother a couple metres of their paiseley fabrics and she made them into little frogs stuffed with sand. My mom is a sewing genius but somehow frogs was not what I had in mind.  Today, Liberty is an iconic fashion destination and hopefully the new deal will enable it to revolve into a more profitable inspirational independent store with more affordable clothes for tight-budget shoppers like myself.

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Iconic Liberty selling its Freehold

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