Burberry shares rose as much as 4.8 per cent after Betaville, a financial blog, said Coach is considering merging with the British trench coat maker.

The US maker of purses and accessories has been working with financial advisers at Evercore for several weeks on a possible deal, the website said, citing two people familiar with the situation it didn’t name.

Earlier this year, the Financial Times reported that Burberry asked its advisers at Robey Warshaw to help prepare a defence for a possible bid.

Burberry shares traded 4.3 per cent higher at 1,513 pence as of 11:31am in London on Friday.

Retail sales

This week the British luxury fashion label Burberry reported a better-than-expected 2 per cent rise in retail sales in its second quarter.

The company said positive trading in Europe and a "significant outperformance in the UK" helped the improvement in comparable retail sales, its first growth in the measure for four quarters.

Burberry has been one of the best-performing stocks since Britain voted to leave the European Union on June 23rd, helped by the weaker pound. Its shares are up 35 per cent, outperforming the FTSE 100 index by 24 per cent.

Analysts were expecting a 1 per cent rise in second-quarter retail.

– (Bloomberg, Reuters

)