Fashion empire: Lew has Myer on the mind in Premier shake-up

afr.com:

A lot of ink has been spilt on Premier Investments’ planned spin-off of its retail brands, but a relatively small amount on working out how Myer fits into all of this.

Premier’s chairman, Solomon Lew, has been liberally employing an exception in the takeover rules to creep up the Myer share register recently, taking his stake in the department store chain to around 30 per cent. That has handed the billionaire influence at the retailer – even if he is at regular loggerheads with management.

Myer kingmaker Solomon Lew. Jesse Marlow

A management shake-up is also on the cards, with Myer chief executive John King stepping down next year after more than five years in the top job, with no successor announced. Myer chairman JoAnne Stephenson is understood to be looking for the exit. No executive in their right mind would look for a way onto the board without Lew’s blessing.

All this comes as Premier announces that it is considering splitting itself into two or more separate companies, demerging its growth assets – sleepwear chain Peter Alexander and kids’ stationery shop Smiggle – which made up just around half of its retail sales in the first half of the last financial year. This leaves its more mature retail brands, including Just Jeans, Portman and Jay Jays, around $400 million in net cash and substantial shareholdings in Myer and kitchen appliances group Breville.

And that raises whether the Premier shake-up is a fashion empire in the making. Will Lew look to marry the company’s remaining fashion businesses and Myer, and if so, just how big would be combined entity be?

Premier’s latest set of results revealed just how much the growth businesses were driving profitability, going someway to explaining why its shares jumped