// Selfridges owners Weston family close to selling the department store

// Thailand’s Central Group and Austria’s Signa Group are seeking to seal the deal

// The Weston family launched the sale process for the Selfridges Group in June

The £4 billion sale of Selfridges is reportedly close to being confirmed as early as this week.

The takeover of the luxury department store by Thailand’s Central Group and Austria’s Signa Group is close to being announced, The Times reported.

The sale of the group is being run by Selfridges owners the Weston family, who are seeking to seal a deal before the new year.

READ MORE: Thailand’s Central Group denies reports of Selfridges purchase

Thailand’s Central Group has teamed up with Austria’s Signa Group to land the group, which includes Selfridges, Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland and De Bijenkorf in The Netherlands.

Although Central Group has previously refuted reports that it is involved in the deal to buy Selfridges, those reports had suggested that it was planning to buy the chain on its own.

The latest report states the Thai group, which last year teamed up with Signa to acquire Swiss department store Globus, had formed a similar joint venture to buy Selfridges.

The two businesses also own German department store KaDeWe, while Central also owns La Rinascente in Italy and Denmark’s Illum.

The Weston family launched the sale process for the Selfridges Group in June, a few months after the death of the family patriarch Galen Weston earlier this year.

The family controls Selfridges through Wittington Investments Ltd in Canada.

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