Asos has sold a majority stake in Topshop for £135 million and has announced a £250 million bond refinancing to help to strengthen its balance sheet.
Shares in the online retailer closed up 66½p, or 18.1 per cent, at 434p after the refinancing and the announcement that it had offloaded a 75 per cent stake in the brand to a group controlled by Anders Povlsen, the billionaire who is Asos’s biggest shareholder.
The company said it had entered into a joint venture with a subsidiary of Heartland, part of Bestseller, the Danish fashion business owned by Povlsen, 51. The group owns brands including Vero Moda and Jack & Jones. It had followed a “competitive sales process”, which included interest from the likes of Shein, the