Retail round-up on April 29, 2016: Property tycoon wants to save at least three-quarters of BHS's 164 stores and Amazon swings to first-quarter profit.

Property millionaire makes “approach” to rescue BHS

A millionaire property owner is reportedly “interested” in taking collapsed retailer BHS out of administration and trying to rescue the failed department store chain, The Times has reported.

Yousuf Bhailok, a former general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, is thought to want to rescue at least three-quarters of BHS’s 160 stores as part of a plan to acquire the retail chain as a going concern.

Bhailok registered a new entity, BHS Revive, at Companies House the day it was placed into administration and was looking to submit his plan to administrator Duff & Phelps.

It has also been reported that Duff & Phelps has secured "around 50" expressions of interest for all or various parts of BHS.

Amazon returns to profit in first quarter as sales leap

Amazon swung to a first-quarter profit of $513m (£351m) from a loss of $57m in the same period a year earlier.

The etailer recorded a 28% surge in its sales to hit $29.1bn in the first three months to the end of March.

Amazon attributed this jump to rising sales of its Kindle reading devices and Fire tablet computers.

Revenue at the company’s cloud services arm climbed 64% year on year to $2.5bn.

Strong growth was also reported in the Prime service customer base.

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