Brown & Jackson sells shops for £1

Angus Monro will start work with a clean slate as chief executive of the cut-price retail group Brown & Jackson on Monday after the company agreed to sell four underperfoming chains for just a pound.

Brown & Jackson, which includes the Poundstretcher discount stores, is selling What Everyone Wants, Your More Store, The Famous Brunswick Warehouse and the B&J Polands stores to the company's controlling South African shareholder, Tradegro.

Tradegro, which owns 55 per cent of Brown & Jackson, is paying a nominal £1 for the loss-making chains but taking on £47m of debt.

The deal leaves the more robust Poundstretcher chain as Brown & Jackson's only business. This will provide the platform on which the former Matalan chief executive Mr Monro can build. The shares jumped 18 per cent to 57p.

Carel Stassen, the deputy chairman, said the group was unable to find any other buyers for the 400 stores. "We have spoken to a number of other parties and this was the best deal we could do for the company," he said.

He said he had held no talks with Philip Green, who used to run What Everyone Wants, over whether the retail entrepreneur would be interested in buying back one of his old businesses. "I understand he has a rule of never going back," Mr Stassen said.

"But we are lucky to have secured the services of someone like Angus and we have no doubt that he will take Poundstretcher from strength to strength." Mr Monro will be paid £300,000 a year and will have 10 per cent of the equity.

The stores being sold by Brown & Jackson recorded a combined loss of £36m in the year to July. These losses contributed to group losses of £47m for the full year, which included an £18m goodwill write-off.

The 338 Poundstretcher outlets were the group's only profit generator making profits of £8m on sales of £267m. Like-for-like sales grew by 3.3 per cent.