WATERSTONE'S last night unveiled plans to drop the Ottakar's name - days after buying the rival bookchain.

And the fate of two Ottakar's stores in the region, in Darlington and Harrogate, North Yorkshire, was unclear last night as Waterstone's owner HMV announced its proposals for integrating the businesses.

In both towns, Ottakar's and Waterstone's shops are almost opposite each other and are in direct competition with one another.

However, an HMV spokeswoman said last night there were no plans at present to close any stores.

She said all Ottakar's stores would be rebranded as Waterstone's before the key Christmas trading period, but stressed she did not yet know which stores would close.

"There's a lot to take into consideration - we can't close stores just like that," she said.

"We've only owned the business a few days so it would have been presumptuous for us to plan anything like that.

"There are no plans at the moment to close any stores. However, we can't rule it out in the future."

It means that in Darlington and Harrogate there will be two stores opposite each other trading under the Waterstone's name.

But the company is unlikely to keep stores so close to each other.

There are 32 places in the UK where Waterstone's and Ottakar's overlap and HMV said it will operate "from one bookstore only in a handful of these locations", but could not say where.

In the next two years, the company aims to make cost savings of about £10m through the takeover as it combines head office operations and suppliers.

Both Waterstone's and Ottakar's have struggled to compete with low prices offered by supermarkets and Internet bookshops in recent years.

HMV hopes the combined business will help improve sales as it battles to regain market share.

It also said Ottakar's would benefit from being able to offer a greater choice of books and more promotions with the backing of Waterstone's