Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct has denied reports that it is planning to close almost all House of Fraser stores after Christmas.
The billionaire owner of Newcastle United swooped for the department store chain in a £90m deal in August 2018, snapping up the firm's 59 stores as well as three offices and two warehouses.
Several have been closed since Sports Direct’s takeover, and in the firm’s annual financial report it said it expected to make more closures.
Reports at the weekend said that almost all of the chain's sites would be closing after Christmas, but Sports Direct has now issued a statement saying that the reports are false and based on papers from accountancy firm EY that relate to a different company.
The company said: "Sports Direct has entered into new leases on the majority of House of Fraser stores. The EY report relates to an entirely different company. Sports Direct continues to work with landlords across the whole of the remaining House of Fraser estate.
"As a result of this erroneous misreading of the administrators report from EY, staff across the HoF group have today woken up to a false sense of job insecurity.
"Sports Direct is working rapidly on our ongoing investment programme with the HoF brand and it is therefore totally incorrect to assume that there will be large numbers of store closures in the new year. We are taking legal advice with regards to this unbelievable level of misreporting."
The intu Metrocentre store was one originally earmarked for closure, potentially putting hundreds of employees out of work, but that decision was reversed in January.
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It had been one of four closures announced after Sports Direct failed to reach agreement on reduced rents with landlord Intu, owner of the Metrocentre and Eldon Square in Newcastle, in which Mr Ashley had threatened to pull all stores he owned from Intu Properties.
As of April, there were 54 House of Fraser stores in operation, and Mr Ashley used the parent firm’s accounts to highlight the challenges faced in his bid to turn around the business.
In the report, also published on Companies House at the end of last week, he said: “We have done as much as we could realistically do to save as many jobs and stores as possible and indeed we appreciate many landlords and local authorities have worked hand in hand with us as we tried to do this.
“However there are still a number of stores which are currently paying zero rent and that are still unprofitable and unfortunately this is not sustainable. We are continuing to review the longer-term portfolio and would expect the number of retained stores to reduce in the next 12 months.”
Sports Direct last week revealed it was to unveil its new luxury shopping experience Frasers in Wolverhampton. It will move in to the unit set to become empty in January when the Debenhams store closes as part of its CVA.
The House of Fraser store in Glasgow operates under the Frasers name, and the Wolverhampton store could mark the start of a national rollout, investing in a reported 15 to 31 House of Fraser stores.