Swedish billionaire Stefan Persson's family nears the 90% needed to take H&M private

Ramsbury Invest, the investment company of Sweden's Persson family, has bought 36.8 million H&M shares so far this year, lifting the family's holding above 68% at the end of August from 49.5% at the start of 2021.

That leaves it about 22 percentage points from a number that matters. Swedish law allows a shareholder who reaches 90% of a company to compel the remaining investors to sell, which would let the Perssons take H&M off the Stockholm exchange without needing anyone's agreement.

People who watch Swedish companies have drawn the obvious conclusion. Sverre Linton, chief legal officer of the Swedish Shareholders' Association, told Reuters it was difficult to read the purchases as anything other than a gradual move towards buying out minority investors, and Deutsche Bank analyst Adam Cochrane expects H&M to be taken private by 2030.

Ramsbury declined to say whether that is the plan. It said the Perssons remain long-term owners who have historically increased their investment in the business.

Control is not the issue. H&M has two classes of stock, and the family's higher-voting A shares gave Stefan Persson and his relatives 83.7% of the votes at the end of the 2025 financial year while holding 65.7% of the shares. They can already decide anything put to a vote. What buying more does is remove the outside shareholders entirely, along with the disclosure, the quarterly scrutiny and the share price that comes with them.

Erling Persson opened the first shop in Västerås in 1947 and called it Hennes, meaning hers, because it sold only womenswear. The name became Hennes and Mauritz after he bought a hunting and fishing retailer called Mauritz Widforss in 1968 and inherited its menswear stock.

His son Stefan Persson ran the company as chief executive and then chairman, and primarily owns Ramsbury Invest. Stefan's son Karl-Johan Persson now chairs the business.

The family is buying into weakness. H&M shares have lost more than half their value since peaking in 2015, sales fell 1% in the first quarter and were flat in the second, and the company is squeezed between Inditex, which owns Zara and has taken the premium end of fast fashion, and Shein, which has taken the cheap end online.

Daniel Ervér became chief executive in January 2024 with a mandate to strengthen the brand and improve profitability. Momentum has not returned.

A depressed share price is what makes a buyout affordable. Anyone taking a listed company private has to pay for the shares they do not own, and the cheaper those shares are, the less the exercise costs. The Perssons have been accumulating through the worst stretch H&M has had in a decade.

H&M was scheduled to report nine-month results on Sept. 24.