Boohoo set to swoop for bankrupt Oasis and Warehouse
Online fashion giant Boohoo is set to announce the purchase of high street brands Oasis and Warehouse, which went bankrupt at the end of April.
Sky News reported that the deal could be announced tomorrow when Boohoo releases its first quarter results.
When the two brands collapsed into administration on 30 April, with 1,803 redundancies, their intellectual property assets and stock were bought by Hilco Capital.
City sources told Sky that Oasis and Warehouse’s online business and their associated intellectual property would be bought by Boohoo.
The price of the deal is not yet known, but it is anticipated to be considerably less than the £18m Boohoo paid for Karen Millen last year.
If the acquisition is completed, it will mean that Boohoo will have expanded the number of brands under its umbrella to nine.
Boohoo, which was set up in 2006, now has a market capitalisation of £4.7bn, two times that of Marks & Spencer.
The buying spree – which included snapping up the minority stake of Pretty Little Thing for £324m last month – underlines the dramatic shift taking place on the UK high street.
The devastation wreaked on physical retailers by the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the shift to online shopping, and led to a number of the UK’s most prominent high street names going bust.
Since the outbreak of the virus, Cath Kidston, Debenhams and Laura Ashley have collapsed into insolvency processes.
With £198m of fresh equity recently raised in order to pursue further acquisitions, Boohoo’s streak of purchases is anticipated to continue.
Morning Wire has contacted Boohoo for comment.