Littlewoods to cut about 3,200 jobs

BRITISH retail group Littlewoods is to cut about 3,200 jobs with the closure of its unprofitable Index catalogue stores.

Littlewoods will sell 33 of the shops to the Argos unit of GUS, Britain’s second-largest retailer by market value, for £44 million (€64m), the Liverpool-based company said yesterday. Those stores employ about 800 of Index’s 4,000 personnel. The rest of Index will be closed.

“Index has made a loss in nearly every year of its 20-year history and has accumulated losses of over £100 million despite many attempts by different management teams to turn the business around,” said chairman David Simons. “The decision to divest the business hasn’t been an easy one to make, but it is the only solution.”