Associated British Foods (ABF) said it is buying Littlewoods Stores Holdings for £409 million to expand its Primark discount-clothing brand to towns and cities.
ABF, which has 122 stores and bought six stores from bankrupt retail chain Allders earlier this year, intends to keep 40 per cent of the retail selling space being acquired and to sell remaining stores to other retailers.
"The estate we are buying is close to unique. Estates like this don't come up very often. They are good high-street locations and they are quite big stores," ABF chief executive George Weston said today.
"Primark is successful in the places it trades. It just currently has a lot of gaps where it doesn't trade, and this deal allows us to fill a lot of those gaps," Mr Weston said.
The cash acquisition includes 120 Littlewoods stores around Britain but not the Littlewoods home-shopping business.
Littlewoods is owned by twin brothers David and Frederick Barclay, the entrepreneurs who also own the Ritz Hotel in London and the Telegraph newspaper group.