INDEX / DIRECTORY / NEW LOOK

New Look

Fashion & Apparel 65 CITED SOURCES UPDATED 2026-08-28
BDS-1000 Score 163 /1000 E Tier E - Limited
Military ↗ 0.00 Digital ↗ 0.00 Economic ↗ 0.00 Political ↗ 1.96

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Key Findings

  • Political: No public evidence identified of New Look corporate statements, lobbying, donations, or operations tied to Israel/Palestine; the only documented political-adjacency finding is an unconfirmed parent-level association between Brait shareholder Christo Wiese and Christian Friends of Israel, which the audit treats as indirect and unresolved rather than a New Look corporate act.1234
  • Political: New Look’s public record shows issue-based communications on other matters, including its 2022 exit from Russia/Ukraine operations and Pride-related content, but no comparable public stance on Israel/Palestine was identified.56
  • Economic / Settlements: No public evidence identified of New Look stores, franchisees, sourcing, warehouses, employment, tax registration, or revenue in Israel or the occupied territories; New Look is also absent from the OHCHR business-and-settlements database and the Who Profits database.7891011
  • Not found: No public evidence identified of any military, digital, or direct economic nexus involving Israeli state/security bodies, settlements, or Israel-linked supply chains.7891011

Target Profile

FieldDetail
Company NameNew Look
JurisdictionUnited Kingdom; UK-registered / UK-domiciled (New Look Retailers Limited, Companies House registration 01618428).1213
HeadquartersWeymouth, Dorset, United Kingdom.7
SectorFast-fashion apparel retail: womenswear, menswear, and teen fashion.138
OwnershipPrivate. Following a 2020 debt restructuring, New Look has been reported as co-owned by Brait SE and Alcentra; Alcentra was acquired by Franklin Templeton in 2022 and later folded into its Benefit Street Partners alternative-credit brand.14151617
Key Executives / GovernanceMike Coupe (Non-Executive Chairman), Helen Connolly (CEO), Richard Collyer (CFO), Richard Cotter, Colin Henry, Robin Terrell, Stuart MacKenzie, Laurence Raven, and Angela Luger / other listed non-executive and independent directors in the audit record.135
Israeli-Nexus SummaryThe audits identify no operational, military, digital, or economic Israel/OPT nexus; the only non-zero domain is political, driven by limited and indirect factors rather than documented New Look corporate activity.78910111234

Key Facts:

Executive Summary

New Look is a UK-domiciled fast-fashion retailer whose documented business profile is civilian apparel retail rather than defence, technology production, or Israel-linked trade.121378 Across the four domain audits, no public evidence was identified of New Look holding contracts with Israeli military or security bodies, supplying dual-use goods, operating digital-surveillance infrastructure, participating in Israeli government technology programmes, sourcing from Israel, or maintaining stores or franchise operations in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territories.7891011

The strongest documented nexus sits in Political, and even there it is limited. The audit found no New Look corporate statement on Israel/Palestine, Gaza, the July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion, or the November 2024 ICC arrest warrants, while noting that the company has publicly communicated on other political or social issues, including its 2022 exit from Russia and Ukraine operations and Pride-related content.56 That asymmetry was treated as a documentary political signal, but not as evidence of material support to Israeli state or settlement activity.56

The other Political element is parent-level and unresolved. Christo Wiese, identified in the audits as the largest shareholder of Brait SE, is named with “Rina Wiese” as a contact in an undated profile of Christian Friends of Israel; however, the audit found no quantified donation, no date, no confirmation that the association is current, and no evidence that this relationship constitutes a New Look corporate act.12 The audit also notes that Mike Coupe, before joining New Look, was the addressee of a 2014 Sainsbury’s campaign letter concerning settlement-linked suppliers, but explicitly treats that episode as historical background at another company rather than New Look conduct.53

The result is a fully human-vetted BDS-1000 outcome of BRS 163, Tier E (Minimal), with Military, Digital, and Economic all scored at zero and Political alone producing a non-zero domain score of 1.96.78910 That scoring reflects the corpus standard described by the user instruction: unsupported allegations were not hardened into findings, and absences, exculpatory evidence, and unresolved limits remain central to the record.

Timeline of Relevant Events

DateEvent
1969New Look was founded in Taunton, Somerset, by Tom Singh; the audit identifies no Israeli founding or incorporation nexus.4
May 2015Brait SE acquired New Look in a £1.9 billion deal, establishing the parent-level ownership structure later relevant to the audit’s limited political review.14
2020A debt restructuring left New Look reported as co-owned by Brait and Alcentra.15
June 2022Helen Connolly was appointed CEO of New Look Group.16
March 2022New Look exited Russia and Ukraine operations, publicly citing “political uncertainty”; the audit uses this as contrast with the absence of Israel/Palestine commentary.6
2024–2025New Look closed stores in the Republic of Ireland and liquidated its Irish branch; the audits found no connection between these market exits and Israel/OPT operations.918
August 2025Brait and Alcentra/Franklin Templeton appointed Rothschild for a strategic sale review of New Look.19
September 2025OHCHR updated its database of businesses involved in settlement-linked activity; New Look was not identified in the audit record as appearing in that database.1011

Corporate Overview

New Look is a private UK fashion retailer headquartered in Weymouth, Dorset, with a disclosed business centred on high-street and e-commerce apparel retail.121378 The audit record describes ownership passing to Brait SE in 2015 and later being reshaped by a 2020 debt restructuring that left the company co-owned by Brait and Alcentra; Alcentra itself was acquired by Franklin Templeton in 2022 and later integrated into Benefit Street Partners.14151617

The company’s documented supply chain consists of 108 suppliers and 1,124 factories across 19 countries.78 The factory-list disclosure reviewed in the economic audit does not name Israel as a sourcing country and does not disclose Israel-linked factories.7 No public evidence was identified of a New Look Israeli importer, subsidiary, joint venture, warehouse, tax registration, office, store estate, franchisee, or licensee.911

The audit record notes one regional franchise relationship outside Israel: New Look entered a Middle East franchise arrangement with Landmark Group covering Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Jordan, with plans for around 40 stores in that region.2021 The digital audit explicitly states that no Israel franchise or presence was identified within that agreement.2021

Governance is conventional for a private retailer. The board and executive materials cited in the audits list Mike Coupe, Helen Connolly, Richard Collyer, Richard Cotter, Colin Henry, Robin Terrell, Stuart MacKenzie, Laurence Raven, and Angela Luger among the company’s leadership.135 The audits identify no state ownership, golden share, defence-industry governance nexus, or board-level roles in Israeli military, settlement, or state-linked organizations.1352

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of any military nexus. The Military audit found no contracts, tenders, framework agreements, memoranda, logistics arrangements, export-licence records, or service relationships between New Look and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, IDF, Israel Prison Service, Border Police, or other Israeli security bodies.11 New Look’s business was described in the audit as civilian fashion retail, and no public evidence was identified of tactical, ruggedised, mil-spec, or defence-grade product lines.128

The audit further found no evidence that New Look appeared in the OHCHR database, the Who Profits database, or PAX’s The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers.101122 It also found no evidence of supply-chain relationships with Israeli defence primes such as Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael, or IMI/Elbit Land Systems; no heavy machinery or infrastructure activity linked to settlements; and no role in munitions, weapons systems, or strategic platforms.1122

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

New Look’s strongest defence in this domain is straightforward: its disclosed business lines are apparel design, sourcing, and retail, not defence production or military services.128 The audit found no direct or indirect documentary evidence of New Look supplying Israeli security end-users, and it also found no mention of New Look in the major military-complicity source classes it checked.101122

The evidence limits are also important. Absence from public databases does not prove the impossibility of any undisclosed historical transaction, but under the corpus standard it means no claim should be made beyond the documentary record. The audits therefore support a zero score here, not a speculative inference.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of a digital nexus. The Digital audit frames New Look as an IT consumer rather than a technology vendor and found no licensing, subscription, or integration relationship with Israeli-origin enterprise technology or surveillance providers such as Check Point, Wiz, SentinelOne, CyberArk, NICE, Verint, Claroty, or Palo Alto Networks.1213 It also found no evidence of Israeli-origin facial recognition, biometrics, retail surveillance, predictive policing, sentiment analysis, or workforce surveillance tools at New Look.12

No public evidence was identified of New Look operating data-centre infrastructure in Israel, participating in Project Nimbus, or providing cloud, AI, cyber, or autonomous systems to Israeli state or security bodies.1211 The audit also found no R&D facilities, acquisitions, strategic investments, co-development arrangements, or research partnerships linking New Look to Israeli technology entities or universities.12

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The strongest defence is that New Look is not a technology producer and no Israeli-origin vendor relationship was documented in the audit record.1213 The audit also found no regulatory or civil-society scrutiny placing New Look within the technology-complicity ecosystem surrounding surveillance, cloud infrastructure, or Israeli state digital systems.101123

As in Military, the record is evidence-based rather than absolute. The audit did not claim full visibility into every software tool New Look may use internally; it claimed only that no public evidence identified Israeli-origin technology relationships material to this domain. That limit is carried forward here.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of an economic nexus to Israel or the settlements. New Look’s own sourcing disclosure states that it works with 108 suppliers and 1,124 factories across 19 countries, and the factory-list page reviewed in the audit does not identify Israel among sourcing countries.78 The economic audit found no direct commercial relationships with Israeli producers or exporters, no Israel-linked import entity, no Israel subsidiary or joint venture, and no indirect sourcing arrangements bringing Israeli-origin goods into New Look’s supply chain.79

The audit also found no public evidence of stores, offices, warehouses, support centres, franchisees, licensees, employment, tax registration, or revenue in Israel or the occupied territories.9 New Look’s international footprint has instead been contracting, including liquidation of its Irish branch and closure of international e-commerce websites.918 The digital audit’s reference to the Landmark Group franchise agreement reinforces this point by naming several Middle East markets while identifying no Israel franchise or presence.2021

The company and relevant parent/owner entities were not identified in the OHCHR database, Who Profits, AFSC’s company index, or the “Don’t Buy Into Occupation” materials reviewed in the audit record.101124

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

New Look’s strongest defence is that the audit found no documentary trace of Israel/OPT operations, sourcing, revenue, or settlement-linked commerce, and the company’s disclosed activity is apparel retail rather than sectors more commonly implicated in settlement trade.789 The absence of Israel from the reviewed factory-list disclosure is materially exculpatory within the limits of public sourcing data.7

The key evidence limit is that the political audit noted a general supply-chain-detail gap because no primary filing in that audit provided country-specific sourcing detail beyond what the economic audit reviewed.78 That does not create positive evidence of Israel-linked sourcing; it means only that the claim remains “No public evidence identified,” not “impossible.”

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

Political is the only non-zero domain, but the documented nexus remains limited and indirect. First, the audit found no New Look corporate statement, press release, or executive comment on Israel/Palestine, the Gaza war, the October 2023 escalation, the July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion, or the November 2024 ICC arrest warrants.5 It contrasted that silence with the company’s public exit from Russia and Ukraine operations in 2022, framed around “political uncertainty,” and with public Pride-related content on its own site.625 The audit treats that asymmetry as a political communications finding, not as evidence of material support.

Second, the audit found no public evidence of New Look operations in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights, and no evidence of organized BDS campaigns, NGO listings, or settlement-operation scrutiny targeting New Look.910112326 This sharply limits the political significance of the communications asymmetry because there is no accompanying territorial or operational nexus in the record.91011

Third, the audit recorded one parent-level association: Christo Wiese, identified in the audits as Brait’s largest shareholder, appears alongside “Rina Wiese” as a contact for Christian Friends of Israel in an undated profile.12 The audit explicitly limits this finding: no donation amount, date, or confirmation of current status was identified, and no statement tied Wiese or New Look to the 2023–2025 Gaza war.12 Accordingly, it is presented only as an unconfirmed, parent-level relationship rather than a New Look corporate act.

Finally, the audit notes that Mike Coupe, before his New Look chairmanship, was the addressee of a 2014 “Taste the Indifference” campaign letter sent to Sainsbury’s over settlement-linked suppliers.53 The audit is explicit that this predates his New Look role by roughly eight years, occurred at a different company, and is included only as background context rather than evidence of New Look conduct.53

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

New Look’s strongest defence is that the audit found no corporate lobbying, PAC-style political donations, leadership roles in geopolitical pressure groups, donations to FIDF, JNF/KKL, reservist funds, settlement organizations, Regavim, or Im Tirtzu, and no logistics or infrastructure support to state or military efforts connected to the conflict.2 It also found no New Look operations in Israel/OPT and no listing in the main settlement- and boycott-related databases it checked.910112326

The parent-level Wiese finding is materially caveated. The audit does not establish that the cited CFI association is current, financial, or operational, and it does not attribute it to New Look itself.12 Likewise, the Mike Coupe/Sainsbury’s episode is historical, external, and non-transferable under the corpus rule against transitive guilt.53 These limits are central to why Political is non-zero but still low enough to leave New Look in Tier E (Minimal).

Named Entities and Evidence Map

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

DomainIMPV-Domain Score
Military0.000.000.000.00
Digital0.000.000.000.00
Economic0.000.000.000.00
Political2.505.508.501.96

V_MAX is driven entirely by Political, reflecting the audits’ limited political findings: New Look’s documented silence on Israel/Palestine relative to other issue communications, plus an indirect and unresolved parent-shareholder association involving Christo Wiese, while excluding stronger allegations not supported by evidence.5612 The other three domains remain at zero because the audited record found no military, digital, or economic Israel/OPT nexus. This is an evidence-only, human-vetted V4 score using scale-free Impact combined with magnitude and proximity.

Methodology Note

End Notes


If you want, I can also tighten this for house style or rework the citations to match an existing numbering scheme once you point me at the target directory.

Footnotes

  1. https://dailyinvestor.com/business/10640/all-the-companies-billionaire-christo-wiese-owns/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. https://www.sajr.co.za/an-inspiring-answer-to-anti-semitism/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  3. https://corporatewatch.org/an-insiders-account-of-the-sainsburys-agm/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Singh ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. https://www.theindustry.fashion/new-look-appoints-former-sainsburys-ceo-mike-coupe-as-chairman/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  6. https://www.retail-week.com/fashion/new-look-exits-russia-and-ukraine-amid-political-uncertainty/5066134.article ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  7. https://www.newlookgroup.com/esg-sustainability/responsible-business/factory-list ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17

  8. https://www.newlookgroup.com/esg-sustainability/planet/sourcing-and-supply-chain ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16

  9. https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/203613 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16

  10. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/un-human-rights-office-updates-database-businesses-involved-israeli ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18

  11. https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/all ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18 ↩19 ↩20 ↩21 ↩22 ↩23 ↩24

  12. http://companycheck.co.uk/company/01618428/NEW-LOOK-RETAILERS-LIMITED ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  13. https://www.newlookgroup.com/about-us/meet-our-team/board-of-directors ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  14. https://fashionunited.uk/news/business/new-look-snapped-up-by-brait-in-1-9-billion-pound-deal/2015051516420 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Look_(company) ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  16. https://www.newlookgroup.com/media/newsroom/press-releases/2022/directorate%20change%2016jun22 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  17. https://www.franklintempleton.com/press-releases/news-room/2026/franklin-templeton-aligns-alternative-credit-firms-under-bsp-brand ↩ ↩2

  18. https://www.heart.co.uk/news/new-look-closing-stores-full-list/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  19. https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2025/08/new-look-potential-sale/ ↩

  20. https://www.arabnews.com/node/295716 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  21. https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/new-look-planning-40-stores-across-me ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  22. https://paxforpeace.nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/The-Companies-Arming-Israel-and-Their-Financiers-June-2024.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  23. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethical-campaigns-boycotts/palestine-boycott-list ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  24. https://www.newlookgroup.com/financials/reports-and-publications/2024 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  25. https://www.newlook.com/uk/get-inspired/features/how-newlookers-are-expressing-themselves-this-pride/01/06/21 ↩ ↩2

  26. https://masjidalaqsa.com/boycott-safe/new-look-israel-bds ↩ ↩2 ↩3