Sweden's H And M In Talks To Buy Portugal's Largest Retail Chain

LISBON (AFP) - Swedish fashion retailer Hennes and Mauritz is in talks to buy all 35 shops belonging to Macmoda, Portugal's largest clothing retail chain.
H and M, Europe's largest clothing retailer, currently has five shops in Portugal and has said it wants to operate 50 shops in the country within 20 years, the weekly newspaper Expresso reported Saturday.
The Swedish giant sees the acquisition of Macmoda, which operates shops in Portugal's main shopping centres, as a way to grew faster in the Portuguese market, the newspaper said citing unnamed company sources.
The deal would be worth some 70 million euros (86 million dollars), industry sources told the newspaper.
"Macmoda is not for sale but in business everthing has its price," Ricardo Tavares, a director of Maconda, which operates Macmoda, told Expresso.
Founded in 1947 by Swede Erling Persson, H and M has over the past two decades gone from a small Scandinavian retailer to one of the world's largest clothing chains with some 950 stores in more than 20 countries.