Potential buyers for Wickes

Wolseley, the world’s biggest plumbing and heating pipe supplier, is a potential buyer for the British Wickes chain of DIY stores, according to a report in the Financial Times. The company, like Travis Perkins, has apparently expressed “a significant interest” in buying the “hard” DIY part of the Focus Wickes group. Other companies are also interested in acquiring the 172 Wickes outlets throughout the UK. These include St. Gobain, Europe’s leading building materials distributor. Such a sale could be completed by the end of the year, and it is expected that it could achieve a figure of about £ 900 mio.