DEAL OF £10,000,000.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3378, 13 June 1927, Page 7

DEAL OF £10,000,000.

Conferences concerning the amalgamation of two of London’s biggest departmental stores recently took place at Lansdowne House, the home of Mr Gordon Selfridge. • It was in the histone library at Lansdowne House, over afternoon tea, to which the directors of the two companies had been invited, that Mr Goidou Selfridge decided to buy the firm of Messrs Whiteley. It will be his twenty-first great English departmental The deal involves £10,000,000. Self ridge’s is eighteen years old, and Whiteley’s which was the first great departmental store in this country ployees, and Whiteley’s 3000. Besides the principal store, Selfridgc’s control seven other big London stores, and twelve in the provinces. It is understood that the deal is between the parent firm of Selfridge’s alone and Messrs Whiteley’s, Mr Gordon Selfridge told the “Evening Standard”: It is no new experi-, cnee for ns to add to our stores, and most emphatically, I should like it to be known that there will be no reduction of staff as a result of this purchase. Nobody will leave either house because of any change in control or anything that affects organisation, “It is unlikely that there will be any change of name of these stores. It has been our plan when buying other stores hitherto, not to change the name, but, in fact, to make as few changes as, possible.” Selfridge’s Store was Mr Gordon Selfridge’s first venture in England after he came to this country as a millionaire from America. He began his business career at ten years of age as messenger boy for a Michigan draper at a dollar and a half a week. Whiteley’s is not less a romance of business than Selfridge’s. William Whiteley started for himself in a little draper’s shop in Westbournegrove in 1861. Halfway through his career lie boasted that there was nothing he could not supply. « Self ridge and Co., Ltd., made a profit of £821,122 last year, including £330,950 from the sale of investments, and paid a dividend of 20 per cent, on the Ordinary shares, as compared with 15 per cent, the previous year. William Whiteley’s, Ltd., made a net profit ot £143,383 on the ycai, and paid an interim dividend of 5 per cent, and a final dividend of 15 percent. There was a reduction of about £BOOO in the profit compared with the previous year. The issued share capital and outi standing Debenture stock of the two companies amounts altogether to £o, 216,852.