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Majestic Wine to acquire Naked Wines in £70m merger

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By John Glenday, Reporter

April 10, 2015 | 2 min read

Majestic, the UK’s largest wines specialist, has announced it is to pay £70m on the acquisition of crowd funded subscription service Naked Wines with the latter’s founder, Nathan Gormley, going on to head up the combined group.

The deal will see Majestic benefit from Naked’s strengths in the online and e-commerce sector whilst Naked will gain access to Majestic’s extensive national store network, boosting its click and collect service whilst giving both the necessary heft to fuel growth in the US and Australia.

Gormley said: "The combination of Naked Wines and Majestic provides the very exciting opportunity to build a world class wine retailer, serving customers who are looking for inspiration that the supermarkets cannot provide. This is great news for the customers, staff and suppliers of both businesses and will ultimately create significant shareholder value."

Jonathan Buxton, partner at Cavendish Corporate Finance who advised on the deal, said: "The UK’s premium wine segment is performing well as is the international direct to consumer market, with particularly strong growth in the US, a key area for the combined companies, while e-commerce is the fastest expanding retail market in Europe. The size of the UK’s ecommerce sector is forecast to increase by some 16% this year to close to £45 billion."

Naked Wines reported sales of £74m for the year ended 31 December 2014, a 40 per cent rise on the year previous. For its part Majestic turned a profit of £21m for the year ended 31 March 2015.

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