Around 750 jobs were today lost at the card chain Birthdays with the closure of 136 stores – many of them in the West Midlands.

Birthdays, with 2,100 workers, was put into administration by its parent company Clinton Cards last month.

Clintons today announced it had bought back 196 shops in a £3.5 million deal and administrators Zolfo Cooper said the remaining stores would all be closed.

While stores in Wolverhampton’s Mander Centre, West Bromwich, Merry Hill and Cannock were today reprieved, Birthdays in Bilston, Brownhills, Kidderminster, Bridgnorth, Stafford and Rugeley are set for closure.

In Walsall just one of three Birthdays stores – at the town’s Crown Wharf shopping centre – survives the cull.

It is thought more than 40 shopworkers across the West Midlands are losing their jobs.

The Birthdays chain was placed into administration by Clinton Cards last month after it was hit by the economic slump and continuing dire trading.

Clinton Cards said £3.25 million of the £3.5 million deal would be deducted from the amount it was already owed by Birthdays, which had been losing around £7 million a year.

The stores will continue to be operated under the Birthdays brand, which has also been acquired, and will be managed from Clinton Cards’ head office in Loughton, Essex.

Clinton Cards chairman Don Lewin said: “We are very pleased to be able to report the successful purchase of a large proportion of the Birthdays stores thereby ensuring employment for 1,450 people.”

Last month it said could no longer fund its subsidiary, as half of all the brand’s stores were loss making after the deterioration in the economy added to Birthdays’ struggling business.