N Brown goes private to end Aim market woes

The owner of Simply Be and Jacamo has agreed to a £191 million takeover by a member of the controlling Alliance family as it blamed its struggles on Aim, London’s junior stock market.
Shares in N Brown rose more than 42 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 the former executive chair Lord (David) Alliance, own a controlling 53.4 per cent stake.
N Brown said Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, which owns 20.3 per cent of N Brown, planned to vote in favour of the deal.
Falcon 24 Topco, the company Alliance will use to buy N Brown, said it believed the group was “not benefiting from being listed on the Aim market, whilst 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.
N Brown was founded in 1859 by the Manchester entrepreneur James David Williams. It was one of the first retailers to post its products directly to customers but its longstanding catalogue was killed off recently in favour of online trading.
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, who, according to Steve Johnson, the chief executive, “used to pop into the office for a brew and a chin wag about Top Gear”.
Like other retailers operating purely online, including Asos, Boohoo, Ocado and Shopify, the fashion-to-financial services company has suffered a decline in demand since the end of the online pandemic boom as shoppers returned to the high street.
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 were trading at about 38p, down from 150p in 2020. In February they were down to as little as 18p.
Joshua Alliance said of the proposed deal: “My family have been supporters of N Brown for over half a century, providing capital and having been involved in the strategic leadership of the business. I am delighted to continue that history.
“This transaction will support N Brown in accelerating its long-term growth potential and provide, where needed, access to additional capital, expertise and resource to accelerate the longer-term potential of the business. In the business’s current cycle of evolution, we will be able to achieve this growth potential more successfully away from the public markets.”