Harrods owners set their sights on Shanghai

Two months after the Qatari royal family purchased Harrods from Mohamed Fayed, plans are afoot to expand the brand - and the most likely city to get a new branch of the world-famous Kensington department store is Shanghai.

Michael Ward, managing director of Harrods, said: "Can we open stores in other geographies? That opportunity is there. There are other areas of the world where we could operate profitably." He added: "China is the most probable, but we would have to do a lot of work first."

Shanghai is the obvious place because there's new money there for high-end retailers to target. The number of Chinese visiting Harrods is up 125 per cent this year ­ and they put their hands in their pockets. The average Chinese shopper at Harrods forks out three times what an average American spends.

Read a full report at the Guardian ·