Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group to snap up another shopping centre

Frasers Group is stepping up its property-buying spree by adding another shopping centre to its portfolio.
The FTSE 100 retailer majority-owned by Mike Ashley, is under offer to buy Fremlin Walk, an outdoor shopping centre, in Maidstone, from M&G Real Estate.
The 350,000 sq ft scheme, which opened in 2005, is home to tenants including H&M, Boots, JD Sports and Pandora and generates an annual gross income of £4.3 million. In the autumn, a multi-brand anchor shop, which will be occupied by Frasers, Flannels and Sports Direct, store is to open.
• Why is Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group snapping up shopping centres?
M&G acquired Fremlin Walk for £110 million from Legal & General Property in November 2014. It was put up for sale with an asking price of £25 million.
Ashley, 59, opened his first shop, Mike Ashley Sports, in Maidenhead in 1982 with the help of a £10,000 family loan. It has since grown to become one of the UK’s leading retail groups, with more than 40 consumer brands and 1,500 stores in the UK around the world.
It has been active in the retail property market over the past couple of years. Last month the company bought Frenchgate shopping centre in Doncaster. It follows the £58 million purchase of The Mall shopping centre in Luton and £30 million purchase of the Overgate shopping centre in Dundee last year, as well as Junction 32, an outlet centre in Castleford, West Yorkshire.
At the time Frasers, in which Ashley owns a 73 per cent stake, said those acquisitions reflected “its confidence in the future of the UK high street”.
More recently, the retail powerhouse has explored a bid for Meadowhall in Sheffield, which ended up being sold to Norway’s oil fund for £360 million, and is in talks with the Crown Estate to take full ownership of the 630,000 sq ft Princesshay shopping centre in Exeter.
Michael Murray, Ashley’s son-in-law who took over as chief executive of Frasers in May 2022, told The Times last month: “Really, the opportunity for Frasers is to create anchor department stores and shopping centres where Frasers can take a floor which is a lot more productive, say 30,000 to 50,000 square feet, and then we can utilise the other floors for other areas of our business such as Flannels, Sports Direct or the gym business, creating a more productive and meaningful destination for our business.”
The buying spree comes at a time when shopping centres are at a low point in the cycle, with values having fallen sharply in recent years amid the rise of online shopping and the subsequent collapse of some of the country’s largest retailers, including BHS, Debenhams and Topshop, all of which were key tenants for landlords. However, there is a feeling that the decade-long slide in retail property values may be over.
Frasers declined to comment.