Frasers Group walks away from Mulberry bid

Frasers Group has faced up to the inevitable and abandoned its attempts to take full control of Mulberry.

The company on Wednesday said that it won’t be making firm offer for the luxury leather goods brand but it added that it remains concerned about the governance at the British label.

Frasers walking away comes after two possible offers it made were rejected by the Mulberry board with Challice, the holding company that controls more than 50% of the firm, having made it very clear that it didn’t want to sell.

That was despite it issuing new shares at a much lower price than Frasers had indicated it was willing to pay.

The Mulberry board this week making its own position clear and saying that with Challice’s stance any takeover attempt was “untenable”, appeared to be the last straw.

It’s no surprise that Mulberry shares fell almost 9% on Wednesday, dropping to 105p each (Frasers had potentially been prepared to offer 150p each). They’d been at a high of 140p on Monday.

What happens now is hard to predict. Frasers still has a roughly 37% stake in Mulberry and increased it slightly in recent weeks as part of the share issue.

It has always said it wants to be a supportive shareholder in the companies in which it has big-but-not-controlling stakes yet it has appeared increasingly unhappy with Mulberry’s results of late.