Frasers reportedly offers cash injection to Debenhams Group

Sports Direct parent company Frasers Group is believed to have offered a cash injection to Debenhams Group – formerly Boohoo Group – as it mulls debt refinancing.

According to the Telegraph, Frasers, which owns a 29.65 percent stake in Debenhams, has reportedly requested a meeting with the retailer’s non-executive chairman Tim Morris to discuss becoming a lender.

The media outlet said that Frasers wrote to Debenhams via lawyers at White & Case that it had been seeking to arrange an “urgent meeting” between Frasers’ founder Mike Ashley and Morris “for several weeks”.

It added that it intended to “engage with Boohoo on a number of urgent matters including the refinancing of Boohoo’s debt and/or an injection of additional monies if required”.

The letter continued: “Frasers stands ready and able to assist Boohoo with any refinancing in order that Boohoo has a suitable and sustainable path forward.”

Debenhams is currently in talks to secure a debt package worth up to 175 million pounds, 50 million pounds of which is to derive from an asset-backed lender. The remaining sum is anticipated to come from the refinancing of an existing two-year loan.

This part of the plan was confirmed by Debenhams to FashionUnited earlier in May, when a spokesperson for the company said: “Having become Debenhams Group, we are currently at the early stages of evaluating our financing arrangements to ensure they best support our capital-lite, stock-lite, marketplace strategy.”

FashionUnited has contacted Frasers Group with a request to comment.