British investor OpCapita was an option for V&D

British retail investor OpCapita was also one of the possible buyers for the department store chain V&D, but it backed out about 10 days ago for an unknown reason.

Controversial

OpCapita, founded in 2006 by former American business banker Henry “Jackpot” Jackson as Merchant Equity Partners, was quite active over the past few years. It bought several bankrupted retail companies or those who were in trouble, like electronics chain Comet and game store chain Game.

Some of the investment firm’s acquisitions were quite controversial, like when it made millions off the British chain Comet’s acquisitions, while the company went bankrupt anyway and more than 7,000 people lost their job a year later.

It is not clear why OpCapita decided to bail out at the last moment, but it may resurface if Coolcat founder Roland Kahn’s V&D acquisition would fail.

News that Roland Kahn would become bankrupted V&D’s new owner was revealed on Friday, but it is not clear how many department stores will survive the relaunch. Plenty of rental partners have said they would not be willing to give V&D another rental agreement. Those talks are still on-going, so we will have to wait until those have finished.