{"id":8877,"date":"2023-03-19T13:04:15","date_gmt":"2023-03-19T13:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/john-lewis-partnership-eyes-stake-sale-ending-100-staff-ownership\/"},"modified":"2023-03-19T13:04:15","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T13:04:15","slug":"john-lewis-partnership-eyes-stake-sale-ending-100-staff-ownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/john-lewis-partnership-eyes-stake-sale-ending-100-staff-ownership\/","title":{"rendered":"John Lewis Partnership eyes stake sale, ending 100% staff ownership"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\/\/<\/span> John Lewis Partnership is at the early stages of exploring a sale of a minority stake in the business to raise funds<\/h6>\n
\/\/ <\/span>The sale would involve changing its employee-owned structure, which would need to be voted through by a council made up of its staff<\/h6>\n\n

John Lewis Partnership is mulling diluting its partnership structure, meaning it would no longer be 100% owned by its staff.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chair Dame Sharon White is thought to be exploring the possibility of changing the retailer\u2019s mutual structure in order to sell a minority stake to raise between \u00a31 billion and \u00a32 billion of new investment, according to The Sunday Times.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Lewis Partnership finance director B\u00e9rang\u00e8re Michel tentatively raised the prospect at a meeting of the partnership council late last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is understood that following Michel\u2019s presentation, the board has been working on the idea.<\/p>\n

John Lewis Partnership, which owns both John Lewis and Waitrose, was put into a trust in 1950 by the founder\u2019s son John Spedan Lewis.<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to sell a stake, a change would be needed to the John Lewis constitution, which would have to be voted on by its partnership council, made up of around 60 staff. <\/span><\/p>\n

More than two-thirds of the council would need to approve the plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, any money raised through selling shares would go into the business, rather than to staff.<\/span><\/p>\n

The business has been struggling of late and is amid a turnaround spearheaded by White. <\/span><\/p>\n

This week it unveiled a \u00a3234m loss \u2013 \u00a378m stripping out exceptionals \u2013 and was forced to scrap its annual staff bonus.<\/span><\/p>\n

The retailer unveiled an aggressive cost-cutting plan and Michel warned that job cuts would be likely.<\/p>\n

The plan was met with criticism from some analysts.<\/p>\n

Savvy Marketing chief executive Catherine Shuttleworth said: \u201cIt\u2019s cost-cutting plan. It\u2019s not a retail recovery plan \u2013 and that concerns me. There\u2019s not enough said about how they\u2019re going to drive sales.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Subscribe to Retail Gazette for free<\/strong><\/h5>\n

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The partnership is understood to need up to \u00a32bn investment in order to invest in better technology and data analysis as well as improving Waitrose\u2019s supply chain.<\/span><\/p>\n

A senior source told the newspaper that the business would only consider selling a minority stake.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis would be to secure the partnership model and ensure co-ownership continues. There could be a shareholder but partners would still own the majority,\u201d the source said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also understood that the investor would have to share the partnership\u2019s employee-centric values.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of moving away from full employee ownership is likely to prove controversial. The last time it was mooted in 1999, one correspondent in\u00a0 JLP\u2019s internal magazine described staff pushing for a stock market float as \u201cgullible, greedy and selfish\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

John Lewis said: \u201cWe\u2019ve always said we would seek partnerships to help fund our transformation and exciting growth plans. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done this with [online grocer] Ocado in the past and now with [housing partner] Abrdn. Our partners, who own the business, will be the first to hear about any developments.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to sign up to Retail Gazette\u2018s free daily email newsletter<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Retail<\/a><\/p>
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\/\/ John Lewis Partnership is at the early stages of exploring a sale of a minority stake in the business to raise funds \/\/ The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}