The Icelandic retail investment group Bangur has announced plans to undertake a significant programme of restructuring as it looks to become a limited company and switch to sterling from Krona.

Coming soon after its director and co-founder Jon Asgeir Johannesson saw his three-month suspended sentence for bookkeeping offences upheld by a Reykjavik court, the group has confirmed that it intends to carry out the switch partly so as to get rid of some underperforming assets.

As part of the restructuring plans, Bangur's Icelandic interests, which include a number of the country's leading supermarkets, will be moved to the Jahannesson family's own holding company.

At the same time, UK assets, which include the House of Fraser, Hamleys, Karen Millen and All Saints, will come to be the main focus of the group's future plans, making up around 85 per cent of its total portfolio, with the remainder made up of US and Danish assets.

Though the group has seen some of its assets perform poorly over the past year, it nevertheless managed to post a like-for-like sales growth of 3.9 per cent, partly driven by the strong performance of Iceland and helped by its decision to sell off the MK One budget fashion chain which was making a loss.