Green: No plans for acquisitions

Billionaire entrepreneur Philip Green said today there were no acquisitions on his radar as he warned the retail sector would see little growth this year.

Speaking at the Retail Week Conference in London, Mr Green said trading conditions on the high street had worsened since his £9.1bn (€13bn) campaign to land Marks & Spencer failed last year.

With growth in the retail sector likely to be flat over the next six to nine months, Mr Green said there was “no need to take a risk” by bidding for a rival.

He told the conference: “There is nothing at the moment of any scale that we will buy.”

Mr Green said the reporting season for retailers over the next eight weeks would underline the difficulties facing the sector, which has been hit by poor weather in 2005 and a slowdown in consumer spending.

Although some retailers were likely to disappoint the market with their trading figures, he said: “I don't think there will be a terrible disaster.”

He added that several of his brands, which include Top Shop, Dorothy Perkins and Burton, were performing “pretty well” in spite of the tough conditions.

Mr Green believed his failure to take over Marks & Spencer had saved him from “a lot of aggravation” as the new management team have struggled to revive its flagging sales.

In January, Marks & Spencer guided the market towards lower profits of between £600m (€862m) and £625m (€898m) after being forced to slash prices to clear excess stock.

“I think we would have had some of the issues that they have got because the market has become fundamentally more difficult,” he said.

But Mr Green reiterated the view that M&S was not worth more than the £4 per share he had provisionally offered and said the performance of the retailer’s shares since July had proved him right.

He said: “Share prices don’t usually lie and we can see where the market is today (on M&S). There seems to be a lot of work to do.

“They have got to demonstrate to somebody whether they can or can’t deliver real value and the current numbers in the market are some £170 million to £180 million (profits) less than last year.

“Unless all retailers were asked to close down for the next two weeks, I don’t see how they can make that up.”

The need to fill deficits in pensions funds, which scuppered private equity bids for companies such as WH Smith and Uniq, were likely to torpedo a lot more transactions in future, he claimed.