HMV rescuer weighs up bid for The Body Shop amid continued uncertainty

The man who saved HMV is weighing up a bid to buy The Body Shop out of administration, as uncertainty around the cosmetics firm’s administration process continues.

Doug Putman, the Canadian businessman most renowned for steering the distressed record shop away from liquidation having bought it in 2019, has contacted to The Body Shop’s administrators about a potential bid, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

The development comes amid a messy administration in which FRP, the advisory appointed to run the process, announced the closure of 82 stores after it took the reins despite all but eight of them being profitable the previous year.

It also made 270 head office staff redundant on a Teams call last month, in a move that the administrators admitted did not follow “normal regulations”, according to an email seen by The Independent.

FRP has said that the store closures were made following a “thorough review of recent and forecast financial performance”. But the opaqueness around both the closures and job losses has led senior MPs, including the Chair of the Business Affairs Select Committee, to call for a thorough investigation.

Putman is the owner of Sunrise records and Toys R’ Us in Canada, but it is with his turnaround of HMV that he built his name in British retail.

Having seen off competition from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group in the bidding process for HMV, Putman has returned the record store to profitability and overseen the company’s return to its Oxford St flagship.

FRP and Doug Putman were all approached for comment.