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Date: Friday 10 Oct 2008

LONDON (ShareCast) - Billionaire shop owner Philip Green has denied talk that he has picked up a 3% stake in supermarket giant Sainsbury’s from forced seller Robert Tchenguiz.

Monaco-based Green, who owns the Arcadia fashion group and made a fortune by turning round Bhs, was responding to an article in the Daily Mail that said he paid £125m, or 250p a share, for the stake.

Maverick investor Tchenguiz put his 10% holding up for sale earlier this week. He reportedly paid 450p a share for it at a time when he was seeking to persuade the supermarket chain to release equity from its stores through sale and leaseback deals.

The move follows his disposal of a 25% stake in Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) on Tuesday for £137m, with billionaire investor Joe Lewis said to be the buyer of the shares.

According to reports, the abrupt sale of both stakes has been occasioned by the implosion of Kaupthing. The Icelandic bank lent money to Tchenguiz to enable him to convert his shareholdings in the companies from “virtual holdings”, held through certificates of deposits, into holdings backed by physical ownership of the shares.

Kaupthing held the M&B and Sainsbury shares as collateral for its loans to Tchenguiz. Since running into liquidity problems the Icelandic bank has been anxious to raise cash through asset sales.

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