Japan’s Fast Retailing in talks to buy J. Crew Group in $5 billion deal

US multi-brand apparel retailer J Crew Group, is in talks to sell itself to Japan's Fast Retailing, the holding company of Uniqlo apparel chain, for upto $5 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Fast Retailing, which unsuccessfully bid $900 million for Barneys New York department store chain of luxury department stores in 2007, approached J Crew this week about acquiring the retail chain from its private-equity owners TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partner, the report said.

The PE firms are seeking $5 billion plus for J Crew, which had Q4 revenues of $868 million and 2013 fiscal year revenues of $2.42 billion.

The talks come as the PE firms were considering an IPO for the apparel chain later this year with a valuation of $5 billion and had hired Goldman Sachs to begin work on a potential listing.

TPG and Leonard Green had taken J Crew private in 2010 for $2.8 billion.

New York City-based J Crew is a multi-channel women's, men's and children's apparel shoes and accessories retailer operating through around 400 retail stores, including 257 J Crew retail stores, eight crewcut stores and 65 Madewell stores in the US, Canada, and the UK.

Yamaguchi City-based Fast Retailing operates 2,568 stores under the Uniqlo, GU, Theory, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Princesse tam.tam and J Brand

It is a specialty-store retailer of private-label apparel controlling the entire clothes-making process from design through manufacture and retail.

Fast Retailing has a market value of nearly $20 billion, and employs around 23,000 people.

It posted net profit of $888.4 million last year on revenues of $11.2 billion.