Reliance unit buys Hamleys for £68m
MUMBAI: Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, sealed another deal to expand his retail footprint in a battle with Amazon.com Inc and Walmart Inc in India.
Reliance Brands Ltd agreed to purchase the 259-year-old British toy store chain Hamleys from C. Banner International Holdings Ltd for almost £68 million (RM367.71 million) in cash, said the Reliance Industries Ltd unit on Thursday.
The transaction would “catapult Reliance Brands to be a dominant player in the global toy retail industry”, it said.
Reliance’s shares rose as much as 1.6 per cent in stock trading, here, yesterday, rebounding after four straight sessions of decline.
The acquisition is the latest in a string of purchases in Ambani’s push into the consumer business, which he says will contribute nearly as much as to the conglomerate’s total earnings as its core energy business by the end of 2028.
Adding Hamleys would give Reliance 167 stores across 18 countries.
The company is already a master franchisee of the toy store in India, where it operates 88 outlets.
For Hong Kong-listed C. Banner, the sale would mark a retreat from the United Kingdom after the Chinese company last year dropped plans to purchase a majority stake in department store chain House of Fraser.
Ambani is stitching together a network of partners through stake purchases or outright acquisitions in the race with Amazon and Walmart for a slice of India’s growing online shopping market, which Morgan Stanley estimates will be valued at US$200 billion (RM831.48 billion) by 2028.