Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

WHSmith-branded shops will disappear from UK high streets and be renamed TG Jones following a £76mn deal to sell the business on Friday.

The group will offload all 480 stores in high streets, shopping centres and retail parks to Modella Capital, a UK consumer and retail investment firm, to focus on its lucrative international travel retail business, which accounts for the majority of its sales and profits.

The WHSmith stores would be rebranded as TG Jones as part of the deal, the company said on Friday. The group’s travel stores in airports, train stations and hospitals will continue to trade under the WHSmith name, which has a 233-year history.

Modella, which also owns HobbyCraft in the UK, said on Friday that the new name “feels like a worthy successor to the WHSmith brand”, adding: “Jones carries the same sense of family and reflects these stores being at the heart of everyone’s high street.”

The shops would keep the same products and services, including the Post Office, and trade as normal while Modella worked with the management team on a new strategy, it said.

Modella added that it “believes strongly in the future of the high street” after previous speculation by some analysts that a new owner could consider store closures in an efficiency drive.

The sale of the division, for an enterprise value of £76mn on a cash and debt-free basis, is a significant moment for the UK high street, which has been hard hit by the shift to online shopping and high-profile collapses such as Debenhams and Topshop.

WHSmith was established in 1792 as a family-run newsagent, and opened its first travel retail store in London’s Euston station in 1848.

Over the past decade the FTSE 250 company has become an international travel retailer through acquisitions, including a $400mn deal to buy Marshall Retail Group in the US in 2019.

WHSmith chief executive Carl Cowling said that, as the “travel business has grown, the UK high street business has become a much smaller part of the group”. WHSmith was aiming to “become the leading global travel retailer”. 

The news comes two months after the group revealed it was in talks to sell its high street business.