TOP LONDON DEPARTMENT STORE IS SOLD FOR £300M

ONE of London’s best- known department stores has been sold in a £300m deal.

Liberty has been offloaded by private equity firm Blue Gem Capital to investors led by rival Glendower Capital. Blue Gem bought the department store for £32m in 2010 and is understood to have raked in around £300m from the sale.

Under its control, Liberty sales at its store in the West End rose from £36m to £94m and online sales were up from £1m to £14m.

Liberty was founded in 1875 using a £2,000 loan from Arthur Lasenby Liberty, who opened the original shop on Regent Street, which is close to its current location.

The firm found fame in America less than a decade later, when playwright Oscar Wilde visited the US carrying with him a wardrobe full of the retailer’s clothes.

Its current Tudor-style store was opened in 1924 and is renowned for its fabrics and luxury items, such as fine jewellery and £2,000 bottles of perfume. Liberty also owns hatmaker Christys.