RE: Article8 Jun 2024 09:07
JP,
Beat me to it. But some more.
"Need a new outfit for a party but don’t want to break the bank? Shein is an obvious place to look. This week I saw a glittery tank top that would make me the belle of the barbeque for £2.49. If you’re looking for a dress, £1.49 will get you the Quirky Fun Dopamine Supermarket Food Newspaper Printed mini skirt.
You might like the clothes, or at least the prices, but should you buy the shares? The fast-fashion retailer is close to choosing London for a public listing. This is a big deal, literally and metaphorically. The numbers are large. The float could value the company at about £60billion. If it sold 10 per cent, that would mean a £6 billion fundraising, the biggest since Glencore made its debut in 2011.
The issues involved are large, too. Some think that Shein is the unacceptable face of fast-fashion, not just because low prices make the clothes easy to throw away. There are accusations of terrible conditions in its supply chain and that it benefits from forced labour in China, in particular cotton from farms worked by detained Uighur Muslims. Peter Hugh Smith, the chief executive of CCLA Investment Management, which runs money for the Church of England, charities and councils, made the case on Times Radio on Tuesday and in an op-ed in The Times on the same day. He wants London to reject Shein, saying that it is a question of “values not valuation”. The solution to the market’s doldrums is not “to make the UK a listing place of last resort for companies with dubious human rights records”.