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Fears grow for 1,100 high street jobs amid doubts over Jones deal

Hundreds more high street jobs could disappear within days amid growing doubts about a rescue deal for the Jones Bootmaker chain.

Sky News has learnt that talks between Alteri Investors, Jones' owner, and Endless, an investor in struggling businesses, have broken down just hours after an agreement between the two sides appeared to have been struck.

Endless is said to have been keen to secure an agreement which preserved most of Jones's 100 standalone stores and concessions.

Sources said that Alteri was now hoping to seal a superior offer for Jones from Pavers, a privately owned footwear chain, but acknowledged that it would inevitably involve an insolvency process called a pre-pack administration.

The sources added that it remained possible that Alteri would decide to liquidate Jones instead, a move that would almost certainly lead to all 1100 employees losing their ‎jobs.

An administration of Jones would come within days of Brantano , its sister chain, enduring a similar fate.

Brantano, which employs a similar number of people, could yet be bought out of administration by Edinburgh Woollen Mill or Shoe Zone (Other OTC: SHEZF - news) , according to retail insiders.

Alteri, which put Austin Reed‎, the menswear chain, into a bankruptcy process last year, has already filed notice of its intention to appoint administrators at Jones.

The use of pre-packs - also in evidence at Agent Provocateur, the upmarket lingerie brand - is attracting growing interest in Westminster, with some MPs (BSE: MPSLTD.BO - news) said to be keen to launch a full inquiry into their application.

Alteri, which is backed by Apollo, the American private equity giant, had bought Jones and Brantano in 2015, putting the latter's operations through an earlier pre-pack process.

KPMG is overseeing the Jones process, while PricewaterhouseCoopers is handling the Brantano administration.

Alteri and Endless declined to comment on Thursday, while KPMG could not be reached.