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Home Retail Group

Home Retail Group Limited
Subsidiary
Industry Retailer
Founded 2006
Headquarters 489 - 499 Avebury Boulevard, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
Key people
John Coombe, Chairman
John Walden, CEO
Products Consumer goods
Revenue £5,710.4 million (2015)
£137.4 million (2015)
£71.6 million (2015)
Parent J Sainsbury plc
Website www.homeretailgroup.com

Home Retail Group Limited, formerly publicly traded as Home Retail Group plc (: ), is a home and general merchandise retailer based in the United Kingdom. It was the parent company of Argos and Habitat, and also owned the DIY chain Homebase until it sold it to the Australian retailer Wesfarmers in February 2016. Home Retail Group was listed on the until it was acquired by the British supermarket company Sainsbury's for £1.4 billion on 2 September 2016.

GUS plc acquired Argos in 1998 and combined it with its mail order business to form Argos Retail Group (ARG) in 2000. It went on to acquire Homebase for £900 million in 2002, bringing it into ARG.

In 2005, GUS bought 33 Index stores, which were subsequently converted to the Argos format. ARG was renamed Home Retail Group upon its 2006 demerger from GUS. Shares in Home Retail Group were traded on the as from 11 October 2006.

In 2007, Home Retail Group bought 27 stores from Focus DIY and converted them to the Homebase format.

In 2011, the Group bought the exclusive rights to the Habitat brand, its brand designs and intellectual property in the United Kingdom and Ireland, along with three stores in London and its website.

In November 2015, the Group rejected a £1 billion takeover proposal from the supermarket company Sainsbury's, which it revealed on 5 January 2016.

On 18 January 2016 it was confirmed that Homebase would be sold to the Australian retailer Wesfarmers for £340 million, subject to shareholder approval. The sale was completed on 27 February 2016.

Sainsbury's submitted a revised offer of £1.3 billion on 2 February 2016, with a deadline of 23 February to make a firm bid.Steinhoff International submitted a rival bid of £1.4 billion on 19 February. Steinhoff abandoned its bid on 18 March 2016, while Sainsbury's submitted a formal bid of £1.4 billion.

On 1 April 2016, the company agreed to a takeover offer from Sainsbury's. The deal was completed on 2 September 2016.


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