Lawrence White
Hong Kong-listed women's footwear retailer C.banner International Holdings will buy 255-year-old British toy shop Hamleys for around 100 million pounds ($154.32 million), a source with direct knowledge of the deal said on Thursday.
The deal for the iconic British retailer, known as the oldest toy shop in the world, comes a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed close ties with Britain at the start of a pomp-laden visit that should seal more than $46 billion of deals.
Some of London's most famous shops have been snapped up by non-British investors. Qatar Holdings owns Harrods; Hong Kong-based Dickson Concepts owns Harvey Nichols; House of Fraser, a nationwide department store chain, is owned by China's Sanpower Group; and Royal tailor Gieves & Hawkes is part of Hong Kong-listed Trinity Ltd.
C.banner will announce the deal shortly, the source said, declining to be identified because the deal is not yet public.
A spokesman for C.banner declined to comment.
Founded in 1760, Hamleys is best known for its landmark shop on London's Regent Street but has branched out abroad in recent years, opening in Moscow this April despite an economic crisis in Russia.
The British toy shop, where Queen Elizabeth bought toys for her children, has been in foreign ownership since 2003 when it was acquired by Icelandic investment firm Baugur after a bidding war with a British-based buyer.
C.banner describes itself as the second largest retailer of middle-to-high-end women's formal and leisure footwear in China. The company counts Nobel prizewinner for economics, Myron Scholes, among its shareholders, it said in a press release in August.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here