Bank of Canada back Weston’s bid for Selfridges

BROWN THOMAS owner Galen Weston’s $1 billion bid for Selfridges Plc, a luxury-goods retailer that competes with Harrods, may cost Canada’s second-richest man as little as $5 million of his own money.

Royal Bank of Canada, the country’s biggest bank, is putting up the rest.

The Toronto-based bank agreed to lend Weston 99.5% of the £628.1 million he offered for Selfridges last month, according to loan agreements on file at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, his London lawyers. The documents, which as a bidder Weston had to make public, show he pledged the retailer’s assets and his holding company as collateral.

Giving Weston that much leverage may give Royal Bank a better shot at winning business from his corporate holdings, which include North America’s third-largest maker of baked goods and Canada’s biggest grocery-store chain. Weston’s last big purchase, the $1.77 billion acquisition of Unilever’s US baking business in 2001, was financed by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, where he sits on the board.

Weston, 62, didn’t get enough support from Selfridges shareholders to complete the purchase by his deadline of last week.

Weston is the world’s 43rd-richest person, with a fortune of $6.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine. He ranks second in Canada to Ken Thomson, the controlling shareholder in publisher Thomson Corp.

Weston has a history in high-end retailing. Along with Brown Thomas he controls Canadian luxury-goods department store Holt Renfrew.&

Most of Weston’s fortune is tied to George Weston, the baked-goods maker his grandfather founded.