Mohamed al-Fayed has sold the Knightsbridge department store Harrods to Qatar Holdings for £1.5 billion ($2.2 billion).

Qatar Holdings has given no details about its plans for the store, but chief executive officer Ahmad al-Sayed told the Financial Times that it had "some ideas." FT reports that one option is to open a store in Shanghai to serve the Southeast Asia market. Another is to develop the Harrods brand in a more aggressive way. Another is to explore whether Harrods should develop an online offering. Qatar Holdings has said that it will upgrade and expand Harrods.

Harrods was founded in 1834 as a wholesale grocery shop, moving to its present site to escape the crime of London's East End and to capitalize on trade from the Great Exhibition of 1851. Harrods currently occupies a 4.5-acre site and has more than 1 million square feet of selling space and more than 330 departments. It is famous for its green bags, Egyptian escalator and food hall, as well as serving 15 million customers each year.

Qatar Holdings has made investments in other high-profile European brands. It owns stakes in Porsche, Sainsbury, Credit Suisse and the London Stock Exchange. This is the first time it has bought 100 percent of a European company directly.