New Look founder makes £600m takeover bid

Tom Singh has tabled a £600m bid for New Look, the fashion retailer he founded over 30 years ago.

The entrepreneur, backed by the venture capital group Apax Partners, has made a tentative offer of 300p a share for the company - 3 per cent below the current share price.

Mr Singh threw the future ownership structure of the company into doubt in July when he said he was conducting a "strategic review" of his 27 per cent stake. That was taken by the market to mean that he was looking to sell out, but while members of his family may walk away, Mr Singh is said to be willing to re-invest some of his cash in the Apax-backed vehicle.

Mr Singh was approached by Apax after appointing Deutsche Bank to conduct the review. The venture capitalists are demanding access to management accounts to begin due diligence.

Mr Singh is hoping to woo Stephen Sunnucks, chief executive, and other managers to join the consortium. They are expected to wait to discover the response of the independent directors to the tentative offer before deciding whether to sign up, but they already have a close working relationship, since Mr Singh is a non-executive director of the company.

New Look shares jumped almost 4 per cent to 310.5p on Friday on the latest burst of takeover speculation. Neither Mr Singh nor the company would comment yesterday and it was unclear last night whether the Takeover Panel would force New Look to make a stock exchange announcement this morning.

Mr Singh, 53, borrowed £5,000 from his parents to open the first New Look store in Taunton, Somerset, in 1969. It took two attempts to take the company public. After institutional investors shunned the stock in 1995, forcing Mr Singh to offload 60 per cent to Barclays Private Equity and PPM Ventures, the company was floated in June 1998 at 165p per share.