Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group confirmed on Monday it had offered 50 million pounds of emergency funding to Philip Green’s Arcadia fashion group, which is on the brink of falling into administration.
Frasers said it was awaiting a substantive response.
“Should the company and the Arcadia Group’s efforts to agree an emergency funding package fail and the Arcadia Group enter into administration, the company would be interested in participating in any sale process,” Frasers said.
Arcadia owns the Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Burton and Outfit brands, trading from over 500 stores and employing over 13,000.
Its trading has been hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic and Sky News reported on Friday that it could go into administration as soon as Monday.
Arcadia said on Friday it was working on a number of “contingency options” to secure the future of the group’s brands.
If it does enter administration it would be the pandemic’s biggest retail casualty so far.