Making sense of the past seven days
Whatever you think of Baugur, it's undeniable that the Icelandic investor keeps life in retail interesting.

Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson and his team have been stalking House of Fraser, linked with Morrisons, and yesterday, to everyone's surprise Mosaic, which Baugur owns about a third of, popped up to buy rival womenswear group Rubicon for£350 million, which - guess what - also owns a stake in Baugur.

In fact, the deal should not have been that surprising. It will create a combined women's clothing and footwear empire which will be a dominant player in the upper-middle market and have, under Derek Lovelock, a tremendously experienced management team.

Rubicon's footwear brands are particularly strong and the deal should create big opportunities for selling across what is going to be a very wide portfolio of stores. The options will be particularly intriguing if Baugur succeeds with House of Fraser, where both Mosaic and Rubicon are major concessionaires.

The combined group will have real buying strength and a platform for further expansion overseas.

Fashion is a very crowded market, but by concentrating on the less crowded middle and upper markets and consolidating so many different brands, Mosaic is well placed to weather the inevitable shake-up.

Yesterday's Retail Week conference on achieving multichannel integration in retail showed how hard it is to reach the holy grail of being a genuine multichannel retailer.

It wasn't just the sheer number of retailers present, but also the volume of questions from the floor, which showed how concerned retailers are about integrating.

Argos and John Lewis, unquestionably the market leaders in non-food multichannel retail, both talked about their very impressive innovations in the field. They have blazed a trail, yet both were honest enough to admit there are still many challenges ahead.

One of the biggest issues is going to be winning over stores - and particularly store managers. Many see sales going online as sales disappearing off their P&L. The challenge is explaining to them that, if sales aren't going to their own web site, they'll be going to someone else's.