Laura Ashley first half loss jumps to 4 mln pounds

Feb 20 (Reuters) - Troubled clothing and furnishing retailer Laura Ashley saw pretax losses more than double in the first half of the year, hurt by weak demand for its home furnishing business and disruption from a change in its Japanese franchise partner.

The company, which secured the backing this week of its main banking lender to continue operations, posted a pretax loss of 4 million pounds ($5.15 million) for the six months ended Dec. 31, compared to 1.5 million pounds a year earlier.

($1 = 0.7760 pounds) (Reporting by Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham)