News last week that ASOS was selling a 75% stake in Topshop and Topman for £135 million showed the e-tailer making loss on the deal. But what it didn’t say at the time was that a higher bid had been tabled for the business.

Reports have said that it declined a much higher offer from Shein and Authentic Brands Group, preferring to enter a joint venture with Heartland in which it retained a stake in the brands and worked with its largest shareholder, Bestseller owner Anders Hoch Povlsen, whose family controls Heartland and has a 27%+ stake in ASOS. 

The deal valued the brands at £180 million in total.

The bid made jointly by Shein and Authentic would still have undershot the £265 million ASOS paid for Topshop and Topman, as well as Miss Selfridge and HIIT, in early 2021, but it would have come closer. It was reportedly £215.5 million, The Times claimed, also saying that the consortium believed it was on the verge of clinching a deal before the 11th hour change.

ASOS said the sale then agreed upon was in the “best interest of shareholders” and granted ASOS “certain design and distribution rights” for Topshop and Topman in return for a royalty fee. That meant it could continue to sell the two brands online.

It also came with plans to relaunch the labels and suggested future potential for them to be in physical stores again, although there are currently no plans to open Topshop stores.

But there’s clearly a belief that this will eventually happen. One major Asos shareholder told The Times it was very pleased with the Topshop deal because “they raised enough money to refinance and got to keep [access to] the brand. It’s a better deal than selling to Shein because it means Topshop will open stores”.

The newspaper also said the problems at Ted Baker, which Authentic owns, are “understood to have contributed to ASOS’s decision to spurn” its bid.