The property portfolio of Mike Ashley's Frasers Group has grown to more than £2B, and the firm's CEO this week said the company has plans to buy up to £20B of real estate across multiple asset classes.

Frasers, which this week bought Harvey Nichols from administration on 13 August for about £40M — although not its real estate — could become one of the UK's largest property companies if it gets even halfway towards that figure.

Bloomberg, in an analysis of Frasers’ corporate and property records, found that the group now owns around 8M SF of retail parks and shopping centre space. That forms part of a broader 16M SF real estate portfolio that Frasers CEO Michael Murray has valued at about £2B.

Murray has set an ambitious target for the business, looking to increase the size of Frasers’ property holdings tenfold over the next decade, taking the portfolio to around £20B.

“There’ll be partnerships, there’ll be joint ventures, there’ll be external funding, there’ll be properties that come with bonds. Twenty billion would be one of the biggest property companies in the UK and that's really what our ambition is,” Murray told Bloomberg.

Frasers could spin out the property into a separate company at some point, Bloomberg said.

The company is increasingly acting as a retail landlord as well as an occupier. That has given Frasers influence in dozens of British towns and cities, in some cases, making it a landlord to businesses competing with its own retailers.

Frasers has also built up a stake in listed build-to-rent firm Grainger and is the preferred bidder to buy the Worship Estate office-led portfolio in the City for £75M.

The property strategy has accelerated alongside Frasers’ transformation from the owner of Sports Direct into one of the UK’s most acquisitive retail groups.

The company was renamed Frasers Group in 2018 following its purchase of House of Fraser from insolvency. Ashley retains a controlling stake of about 74%, while under Murray's term as CEO, the company has built an extensive portfolio spanning, among others, Sports Direct, Flannels, Jack Wills, USC and House of Fraser, plus investments in brands including its latest takeover target Hugo Boss, Burberry, Mulberry and Asos.

The property strategy has delivered some striking bargains. In 2024, Frasers acquired the 600K SF Princesshay shopping centre in Exeter for around £55M. That scheme was developed by joint owners the Crown Estate and Nuveen in 2005 for more than £200M.

Likewise, Frasers acquired Doncaster's Frenchgate shopping centre for circa £35M. It had been bought for about £200M in 2006.

The model creates potential synergies with Frasers’ retail operations, and the Harvey Nichols acquisition is a good example. The retailer has suffered years of losses and accumulated £190M in pretax losses under owner Dickson Poon over six years, and reported a 10% fall in revenue for the year to March 2025.

The Harvey Nichols deal has given Frasers operational control of six UK stores — its London flagship plus stores in Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol — along with Harvey Nichols’ online business, inventory and international franchise agreements.

It won out over rival Next largely because it was prepared to take on all six assets, but some could yet be converted to Flannels.

Ashley himself described Harvey Nichols as being in a “death spiral” before the acquisition and said turning it around would be a “huge challenge.”