Great Universal Stores (GUS), the London-listed retailer which specialises in home shopping, plans to float up to 25% of its Burberry fashion unit on the London Stock Exchange by mid-2002.

GUS, which has a market capitalisation of nearly £5.3bn (€8.65bn), could raise as much as £500m from floating Burberry, which some analysts reckon could be worth as much as £2bn.