LONDON - THE majority of The Officers Club's menswear stores were sold on Wednesday, a day after the company went into administration. The deal will save more than 900 jobs, but adds yet another name to the growing list of British shops that have failed to survive the financial downturn.

TimeC 1215 Ltd., a new company backed by The Officers Club's chief executive, David Charlton, bought 118 of the retailer's 150 stores.

PricewaterhouseCoopers put the chain up for sale after it went into administration - a form of bankruptcy protection - on Tuesday.

'We are very pleased to be able to secure this deal and protect the employment of over 900 people in the stores and head office,' said Charlton.

PricewaterhouseCoopers said the deal represented the best outcome that the company's creditors - who will receive some money as a result of the sale - could have got.

The sale 'represents a significantly better result for the creditors of the companies than any other alternative,' said PricewaterhouseCoopers' Ian Green, who helped coordinate the deal.

The Officers Club is the latest in a series of big British retail brands to be hit by the economic turmoil - 99-year-old general store Woolworths and tea and coffee merchant Whittard of Chelsea, have already collapsed.

The Officers Club, based in Northumberland, northeast England, was founded in the early 1990s, selling clothes sourced cheaply from Asia.

Following buy-outs, it grew quickly to become Britain's largest menswear-only retailer, with a flagship store on London's famous shopping strip, Oxford Street.

But the company struggled to find a strong customer base after it moved from being a low-cost retailer to the middle market.

The collapse of The Officers Club follows a prediction, made on Tuesday, by insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor that as many as 15 'major' British household-name retailers could fail by the middle of January.

In total, 356 British retail companies collapsed during the third quarter of 2008 - 39 percent more than the same period last year - according to The Insolvency Service. -- AP