Victoria’s Secret sale scrapped after buyer filed lawsuit to escape deal

A pedestrian walks past a Victoria's Secret location in Chicago in March.(Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Vicky is back on the market.

L Brands, the retail company that planned to sell off Victoria’s Secret until the buyer tried to walk away from the deal amid the coronavirus pandemic, on Monday said both sides agreed to mutually terminate the agreement.

Sarah Nash, the incoming L Brands chairwoman, said that the Ohio-based company decided to wave the white flag rather than engage in a legal battle with Sycamore Partners, the buyout firm that inked the Feb. 20 deal.

Sycamore had filed a lawsuit two weeks ago as it attempted to wrangle out of the agreement with Victoria’s Secret shuttered stores slumbering across the U.S.

In a statement, Nash said L Brands had decided to focus on navigating the challenging economic waters posed by the pandemic “rather than engaging in costly and distracting litigation to force a partnership with Sycamore.”

The agreement shelves a battle that would have tested the legal waters for a firm attempting to cite the virus in aborting an acquisition. Sycamore said in its suit that L Brands broke the terms of the $525 million agreement when it furloughed workers and closed about 1,600 stores around the world.

L Brands initially had said it would fight the suit.

On Tuesday afternoon, L Brands stock value had slipped about 1.7% from the start of the trading day.