BHS administrators strike deal to sell 70 stores and online operations

Al Mana, a Qatari group that runs some of BHS’s overseas stores under a franchise arrangement, has penned a deal to acquire more than 70 shops and its online operations.

It is not yet known how much Al Mana is paying for the stores, but the deal is poised to be formally announced tomorrow.

If the deal is completed, it would mark the first tranche of stores to be sold by Duff & Phelps since the firm was drafted in to handle BHS’s administration in April.

Sky News reported that the Qatari company, which also has a licensing agreement with HMV, has been in talks with Duff & Phelps for “several weeks”.

It means the the BHS brand, which will disappear from the British high street after 88 years, is poised to live on overseas.

News of the potential deal has emerged less than a month after administrators revealed that BHS would be wound down after they failed to find a buyer, despite interest from the likes of Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley and Edinburgh Woollen Mill tycoon Philip Day.

BHS’s demise is being probed by MPs, who have called former BHS owner Sir Philip Green and the head of the Retail Acquisitions consortium, Dominic Chappell, to give evidence surrounding the sale of the business, its corporate governance and its £571m pension deficit.

The Pensions Regulator, the Insolvency Service and the Financial Reporting Council have all launched separate probes into the retailer’s collapse.