It said the buyer was a team led by the retail entrepreneur Mike Greene, funded by Greybull Capital.
The
shops will be rebranded as "My Local". The 2,300 staff will be kept on,
with an extra 200 jobs to be created by reopening 10 shops that are
currently closed.
Morrisons announced a review of its convenience store business in March.
The announcement came as it reported an annual loss of £792m.
It
now plans to concentrate on its core supermarkets business. It will
keep five of its M local shops that are either on petrol forecourts or
can be converted into small supermarkets.
Losses from sale
Morrisons opened its first convenience store in 2011, but the bulk of them have been open for less than two years.
They were supposed to boost the supermarket chain's presence in south-eastern England.
It
expects to lose about £30m on the transaction and will also be remain
liable for the leases on the shops if the new business fails.
Despite
the failure of M local, Morrisons chief executive David Potts said in a
statement: "We remain open to other opportunities in convenience in the
future."
He said the reason M local failed was because it was "unable to scale". They made an operating loss of £36m last year.
Forty-nine of the convenience stores were bought from the administrators of the film rental business Blockbuster.
Mike
Greene is a former chairman of the Association of Convenience Stores
and founded the Association of News Retailing. He chairs or is on the
board of various other companies and has considerable experience with
convenience stores.
Greybull Capital is the investment firm that last year put up £125m to rescue Monarch Airlines.
The 10 shops reopening under the My Local brand are:
- Teddington
- Shirley, Southampton
- Sutton Coldfield
- Walton-on-Thames
- Rayleigh, Essex
- Paignton, Torquay
- Ramsgate, Kent
- Camberley, Surrey
- Edinburgh
- Littlehampton, Sussex
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