Boohoo Group is forging ahead with its rebrand to Debenhams Group despite losing a vote on its holding company name due to the opposition of its single biggest shareholder, Frasers Group.
The vote affects the name change for the Jersey-based holding company and saw the shareholder meeting to vote on the proposal late last week continuing the ongoing battle between Boohoo/Debenhams and Frasers.
The basic facts are that the business for practical purposes has now rebranded itself Debenhams Group, although only getting around 62% support for the Jersey holding company to change from Boohoo Group plc to Debenhams Group plc meant that particular resolution didn’t pass. The resolution needed two-thirds approval to get through and as not all shareholders voted, Frasers’ roughly 29% stake actually accounted for around 38% of the votes cast.
Yet Debenhams is what it will be known as to everyone but its shareholders and even with that situation, its ticker symbol for trading on the stock exchange is changing from BOO to DEBS.
Boohoo/Debenhams said in a stock exchange release: “It is no surprise to the board that Frasers, a major competitor of the group, has voted against the resolution, and continues to act in its own self-interest. Whilst the resolution was not passed, we continue forward as Debenhams Group.”
The rebrand was announced earlier this month and comes as Boohoo drives through major change. As well as relaunching its PrettyLittleThing business with a more upmarket profile, it’s tapping into the turnaround success of the Debenhams business that it acquired out of administration.
Debenhams is the fastest-growing part of Boohoo, is the careful steward of other acquired brands such as Oasis, Warehouse and Coast and is making the most of a marketplace model that the rest of the business wants to adopt.
But Mike Ashley, the majority owner of Frasers Group, is clearly not happy. And that’s perhaps unsurprising. He’d built up a stake of almost 30% in Debenhams when it was stock exchange-listed last decade, spending around £150 million. But he was forced to look on as the once-dominant department stores company rebuffed his efforts to get involved and ultimately failed.
He also didn’t bid for the under-administration company, saying the data provided about the business was “woefully inadequate” and that his firm couldn’t bid on such vague information. Boohoo eventually won the prize for £55 million, much less than Ashley had spent on his stake.
He’s since built up that chunky shareholding in Boohoo itself but in recent periods Frasers has failed in attempts to oust Boohoo’s co-founder Mahmud Kamani from the board and to get Ashley onto the board.
Frasers hasn’t yet commented on the name change situation but one thing seems clear — the battle isn’t over yet.
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