John Lewis logistics firm Clipper agrees £940m US takeover
A warehousing company that counts John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons and Asda among its customers has agreed a possible takeover deal worth up to £940m with a New York rival, in the latest sign of the boom in online delivery.
The board of Clipper Logistics, headquartered in Leeds, unanimously recommended the possible takeover offer by New York-listed GXO Logistics of 690p a share plus shares in the Connecticut-based company worth up to 230p for each Clipper share.
Clipper’s shares jumped by 14% on Monday morning to 887p, near their record high of 910p.
Warehouses have become a huge growth business in the past decade, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, as online shopping has accounted for an ever greater share of total spending.
The shift to online shopping accelerated even faster during lockdowns. Clipper serves fast-growing retailers such as Boohoo, Asos and JD Sports, and in the UK supermarket deliveries also expanded rapidly.
Clipper is mainly focused on clothing, with retailers outsourcing their online deliveries to the company, which manages stock and picks and packages clothes in its warehouses. It also handles clothing returns, an important and costly issue for fashion retailers.
Clipper, which claimed £3.8m from the UK government under the coronavirus job retention scheme, also benefited during the pandemic from the UK government’s massive spending on personal protective equipment (PPE), in deals that drew scrutiny because of Clipper founder Steve Parkin’s donations to the Conservative party worth £730,000. Clipper said it has processed more than 1bn PPE items during the pandemic and it described its newly created PPE unit as a “development opportunity” in its annual report.
Parkin, who holds 15% of the
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