Private equity investor Jon Moulton and French sports retailer Decathlon are thought to be among the possible bidders for troubled retailer JJB Sports, as figures show high street retailers have struggled to attract shoppers during the Olympic Games.
Mr Moulton's company Better Capital has been granted access to the data room of JJB Sports, a Sunday newspaper reported.
French retail giant Decathlon is thought to be interested, as is former owner Dave Whelan.
Rivals Sports Direct and JD Sports are also looking at parts of the business.
Turnaround firm OpCapita and JJB's largest shareholder Invesco Asset Management have also been linked to a bid.
JJB put itself up for sale last week after struggling to find funding in the face of deteriorating sales.
This put the future of its 180 stores, including 33 in Scotland, in doubt.
The sales process is being led by accountant KPMG and its Edinburgh-based corporate finance partner David McCorquodale.
The most likely scenario is that the company is placed into administration before some, or all, of it is sold. JJB had a market worth of £1.6 million after its shares plunged.
Meanwhile, figures released by accountant BDO show the high street is still having a tough time. It reported that in August like-for-like sales at mid-tier retailers dipped by 0.5% year-on-year. BDO blamed erratic weather for fashion sales being down 1.3%.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article