The owner of Simply Be and Jacamo is joining the ranks of struggling UK stocks delisting from London’s junior Aim market after it received a £191 million takeover bid by a member of the controlling Alliance family.
Shares in N Brown rose more than 43 per cent on the news that Joshua Alliance, a shareholder and non-executive director, would pay 40p in cash for each share in the business that he does not already own.
At present Alliance owns 6.6 per cent of N Brown; the other members of the family, including Lord Alliance, the former executive chairman, own a controlling 53.4 per cent stake. Joshua, 35, is the son of Lord Alliance, 92.
N Brown said Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, which owns 20.3 per cent of N Brown, planned to vote in favour of the takeover. The deal values Frasers’ stake at £38.77 million.
Falcon 24 Topco, the vehicle that Alliance will use to buy N Brown, said it believed the group was “not benefiting from being listed on the Aim market, while having to bear significant costs associated with its listing”.
It suggested that N Brown’s shareholder structure, “very low trading liquidity and the limited UK fund manager appetite for small-cap consumer stocks” meant that it had struggled on the junior London stock market.
A number of companies have delisted from Aim this year, adding to concerns about the future of the City’s financial sector.
N Brown was founded in 1859 by the Manchester entrepreneur James David Williams. In addition to its lucrative niche in clothing “larger” people through its brands Simply Be, Jacamo, Marisota, Ambrose Wilson, Oxendales, Fashion World and Premier Man, it sells clothes designed for older women through its JD Williams label, operates a virtual department store called Home Essentials and provides flexible credit plans.
Its ambassadors include the television presenters Davina McCall and Amanda Holden and formerly the cricketer Freddie Flintoff.
Shares in the group, which has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 1972, have fallen by about 70 per cent in the past five years. They closed at 38¾p on Thursday, down from 150p in 2020. In April they were down to as little as 14p.
Joshua Alliance said of the proposed deal: “This transaction will support N Brown in accelerating its long-term growth potential … we will be able to achieve this growth potential more successfully away from the public markets.”
