Alshaya Group, the Middle East franchise owner of Debenhams, said its outlets across the region would continue operating as normal despite the collapse of the department store chain in the UK.
The Kuwaiti family-owned business, which has 26 Debenhams stores across the Middle East, including nine in Saudi Arabia and six in the UAE, said business would be unaffected by Debenhams failing to find a buyer to save its business.
However, 12,000 British employees at 124 UK stores face losing their jobs, just a day after retail tycoon Philip Green's Arcadia fashion group entered administration, threatening about 13,000 jobs.
"Whilst the UK high street faces ongoing challenges, Alshaya Group confirms that today's UK news announcements about Arcadia Group and Debenhams do not affect its Middle East business operations and our stores will continue to welcome customers as normal," Alshaya told The National on Tuesday.
Debenhams, a feature of the UK high Street for more than 200 years, said it would start a wind-down of the brand while continuing to seek offers for all or parts of the business.
Alshaya Group also owns the franchise for several Arcadia fashion brands, including Topshop, Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge.
Debenhams Group, which fell into administration for the second time in April, said its sale process to potential buyer JD Sports did not result "in a deliverable proposal".
“The administrators have therefore regretfully concluded that they should commence a wind-down of Debenhams UK, whilst continuing to seek offers for all or parts of the business,” the company said in a statement.
Debenhams staff in the UK were told the news on Tuesday morning, with the brand continuing to trade across the country and online to clear stock.
David Macadam, chief executive of the Middle East Council of Shopping Centres, said the impact to franchise holders of brands, such as Debenhams, going under occurs much later and “to a far less extent in the Mena region”.
"It takes time to filter through the system to reach this end of the world and in the meantime, it's pretty much business as usual, as long as the inventory is there," he said.
Sandeep Ganediwalla, partner at the Middle East practice of India's Redseer Consulting, said this is not the first time a UK chain has gone through administration without its UAE operations being compromised. He points to the collapse of Jamie Oliver's restaurant group last year, which did not affect the running of Jamie's Pizzeria in Dubai's Jumeirah Lakes Towers.
"There are a lot of brands in the UK or other parts of the world that have gone into administration but because this is a franchise operation, the franchise operators have decided to continue with the brand," said Mr Ganediwalla.
"It depends on whether customers think the brand is tarnished and whether sourcing continues. If the underlying designers go out of business and there is no stock for Debenhams to stock here, then that is a challenge. If that is not the case, I would not be surprised if Debenhams continues to operate in some form.”
He noted the US brand Borders, which went into administration in 2011, yet its UAE franchise owner Al Maya Group continues to operate 17 stores across the Emirates, with other outlets in Oman and Qatar.
Normcore explained
Something of a fashion anomaly, normcore is essentially a celebration of the unremarkable. The term was first popularised by an article in New York magazine in 2014 and has been dubbed “ugly”, “bland’ and "anti-style" by fashion writers. It’s hallmarks are comfort, a lack of pretentiousness and neutrality – it is a trend for those who would rather not stand out from the crowd. For the most part, the style is unisex, favouring loose silhouettes, thrift-shop threads, baseball caps and boyish trainers. It is important to note that normcore is not synonymous with cheapness or low quality; there are high-fashion brands, including Parisian label Vetements, that specialise in this style. Embraced by fashion-forward street-style stars around the globe, it’s uptake in the UAE has been relatively slow.
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
DMZ facts
- The DMZ was created as a buffer after the 1950-53 Korean War.
- It runs 248 kilometers across the Korean Peninsula and is 4km wide.
- The zone is jointly overseen by the US-led United Nations Command and North Korea.
- It is littered with an estimated 2 million mines, tank traps, razor wire fences and guard posts.
- Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un met at a building in Panmunjom, where an armistice was signed to stop the Korean War.
- Panmunjom is 52km north of the Korean capital Seoul and 147km south of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.
- Former US president Bill Clinton visited Panmunjom in 1993, while Ronald Reagan visited the DMZ in 1983, George W. Bush in 2002 and Barack Obama visited a nearby military camp in 2012.
- Mr Trump planned to visit in November 2017, but heavy fog that prevented his helicopter from landing.
Profile of Bitex UAE
Date of launch: November 2018
Founder: Monark Modi
Based: Business Bay, Dubai
Sector: Financial services
Size: Eight employees
Investors: Self-funded to date with $1m of personal savings
The struggle is on for active managers
David Einhorn closed out 2018 with his biggest annual loss ever for the 22-year-old Greenlight Capital.
The firm’s main hedge fund fell 9 per cent in December, extending this year’s decline to 34 percent, according to an investor update viewed by Bloomberg.
Greenlight posted some of the industry’s best returns in its early years, but has stumbled since losing more than 20 per cent in 2015.
Other value-investing managers have also struggled, as a decade of historically low interest rates and the rise of passive investing and quant trading pushed growth stocks past their inexpensive brethren. Three Bays Capital and SPO Partners & Co., which sought to make wagers on undervalued stocks, closed in 2018. Mr Einhorn has repeatedly expressed his frustration with the poor performance this year, while remaining steadfast in his commitment to value investing.
Greenlight, which posted gains only in May and October, underperformed both the broader market and its peers in 2018. The S&P 500 Index dropped 4.4 per cent, including dividends, while the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index, an early indicator of industry performance, fell 7 per cent through December. 28.
At the start of the year, Greenlight managed $6.3 billion in assets, according to a regulatory filing. By May, the firm was down to $5.5bn.
Yemen's Bahais and the charges they often face
The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
