The branch managers of high street store group Xenos have been summoned to attend personnel meetings on Wednesday evening for a special announcement, Elsevier said on Tuesday.

Blokker Holding, which owns Xenos, has confirmed the meeting will take place but declined to comment further. A spokesman told the Telegraaf that the meeting is not about a ‘bankruptcy’.

Unions said they expect Xenos to announce a ‘reorganisation’ and that union officials have not been briefed about the gathering. Last year, the Blokker household goods chain cut 400 jobs because of declining sales.

High street

The Blokker Holding company includes Bart Smit, Intertoys, Leen Bakker and Big Bazar as well as Xenos and Blokker itself.

Xenos has some 250 shops, of which around 200 are in the Netherlands and the rest in Germany. The total workforce numbers around 3,500.

Over the past few weeks, the VVD department store group and the Macintosh retail company have both gone bust. On Monday, the Christine le Duc sex shop chain said it was reducing its high street presence from 26 to 13 shops.