25,000 in 24 hours.

[JoM]

Jo you are 100% correct about your new Outlet centre. Those kind of shops are no threat to the High Street, they serve a completely different demographic.

It’s been quite heated at times on the local Facebook group. People think that the likes of Poundland and the independent chemists are going to relocate there
The latest outrage is over the sign that’s appeared. It’s big but then it’s got to be. A petition was started to get it reduced in size....so another petition was started to have it made bigger and lit up Vegas-style (I signed that one ).

[Kaz]

Poundland?! Ours has Ted Baker, Jack Wills, Radley.....to name just a few! I don't think they quite get the concept, so they?

[cromwell]

The Telegraph had an interesting article on Debenham's yesterday.
In 2003 they were taken over by three "private equity firms" (whatever they are) for £600 million.
In the three years that they owned Debenhams they took out £1.2 billion in dividends.
During this period shops worth £495 million were sold off. Debenhams then rented them back at very high rents in leases of up to 35 years.
It looks like Debenhams was asset stripped.

The Guardian has a good article too.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -ownership

The MO seem to be borrow a lot of money to buy a business,load it with debt, float it on the stock market, take the money and run.

Debenhams owed £100 million in 2003, by 2006 they owed more than £1 billion.
I don't even know how this stuff is legal.

[Suff]

You have to look at the timing. This was the Blair Brown government of artificially low interest rates which ran into the huge blow up of the financial crisis.

It was in vogue to borrow hugely on ultra cheap loans which were 18 months expiry or less. Loans were very effective in boosting businesses whilst sucking out the money at the back end. Interest rates were so low that there was no benefit in putting your money in the bank. What you did was put your money into a business, pump it and dump it on the stock market. The pumping was done with huge loans and the IPO listing gained massive sums to offset it. They then sucked the IPO money out of the company and went off to do it again with another one.

In 2009 this all came to a screeching halt when they couldn't roll over the loans and companies started to go bust.

Also you have to factor in Blair's invasive taxation changes for companies who owned assets. Sell the assets, lease them back and the taxation turns negative. You will probably find that the difference between taxation on asset value increases, offset against the loan and the tax benefit of leasing, probably put the "expensive" lease deals on the positive side of the leger.

It is all very questionable when it all goes wrong, but until it does all go wrong nobody questions it.

It was not clear, when Zavvi bought out Virgin megastores, what would happen when the financial crisis hit. Zavvi had borrowed short term funds to buy it out. Interest rates were still dropping, who would take a 10 year loan? Until they couldn't roll over the loan, even with the hundreds of millions the business was making, so they went under.

Debenhams is just another corpse of the financial crisis that has been reanimated until the next crisis, when it finally slips into its grave.

The fact that a private equity consortium pumped it and dumped it? That is what drives the stock market that pays for all our private pensions. It's not very nice, sometimes it's pretty shady, but it is what we have.

[Workingman]

Ah yes, bad old Labour, the administration of Blair and Brown that handed over the setting of rates to the newly independent BoE. That Labour?

This followed Maggie artificially raising rates to 17% in 1979 and keeping them in double digits+ for over ten years till the success that was the ERM and Black Wednesday forced them down to keep UK Plc afloat. That downward pressure continued till 2003 when, up till 2007, they rose again from 3.5% to 5.75% - the old and historical levels. Then came the GLOBAL crash where, overnight, they dropped to 2% and then down to 0.5% in early 2009 where they have largely remained under the Conservatives ever since.

Those same Conservative have had plenty of time to modify or reverse Blair's tax changes, which were loudly applauded by big business at the time, but they haven't.

I also thought that a big part of the Zavvi problem was the collapse of Woolworth and its wholesale arm which was Zavvi's major supplier.

None of the above alter the facts that robber Baron's Green and Day and others of their ilk have played fast and loose with the jobs of tens of thousands and the pensions of millions of others while they sit on their yachts or reside in their offshore mansion hideaways. Scum of the Earth each and every one.