Home furnishing giant IKEA sells brand for $11bn

PanARMENIAN.Net - The world’s largest furniture retailer IKEA has sold its brand for 75 billion Swedish kronor ($11.2 billion) to one of its subsidiaries, Swedish newspaper The Local, reported on Thursday, August 9, according to RIA Novosti.

The brand was sold by Interogo, controlled by IKEA's founder Ingvar Kamprad and based in the tax haven of Liechtenstein, to daughter company Ikea Systems in the Netherlands.

IKEA said the transaction was aimed at simplifying the company’s structure.

The Ikea brand ranks 89th among the world’s 100 most valuable brands but is not the highest-ranking Swedish company. It is second to Swedish Hennes and Mauritz (H&M) apparel retail chain estimated at 125 billion Swedish kronor and ranking 58th among the world’s most valuable brands.

IKEA was founded in 1943 and operates over 300 outlets in 41 countries. The Swedish company entered the Russian market in 2000.

The paper cited an expert as saying 75 billion kronor was not an unreasonable sum.

“If you buy Ikea’s brand you are simultaneously buying all the customer relations and goodwill that the company has worked for. That’s what you pay for – not the logo,” Bengt Hakansson of Brand Clinic told the TT news agency.