Lurid boardroom chaos spells worrying news for the mighty Selfridges

Jonathan Prynn

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Prynn ANC Katy N THE cavernous shop floors of Selfridges everything appeared normal in the manic O run-up to Christmas.

The usual hordes milling around the ground-floor perfume and cosmetics counters; the queues at the tills of the basement baubles and crackers emporium; the escalators laden with wealthy customers intent on conspicuous consumption.

Outside on Oxford Street, customers carried those instantly recognisable golden yellow paper bags bulging with Selfridges swag. There were even queues to enter the building at the start of the Boxing Day sales.

But in the boardroom of the company that owns London's second biggest department store it has been anything but business as usual over recent weeks. Selfridges, which for so long enjoyed the stable stewardship of the Canadian Weston family, now finds itself caught in a messy and complex wrangle over its ownership with many key decisions about its future now being taken in a Vienna insolvency court.

The origins of the saga lie in the sale of the Selfridges business in December 2021 for £4 billion after 15 years of Weston ownership brought to a close by the death of patriarch Galen Weston.

The company also includes 24 other stores in Manchester, Birmingham, Ireland and the Netherlands - but the jewel in the crown is undoubtedly the swaggering West End retail institution founded in 1909 by the maverick US tycoon Harry Gordon Selfridge, the man who is said to have coined the motto "the customer is always right".