Blockbuster - Another High St store in administration

[DonkeyApple]

Deva Link said:

DonkeyApple said:

Someone has woken up to what has really been happening on our highstreets: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/ba...

Easy money allowed for massive expansion and overpaying of leases. Local owners squeezed out. Highstreet structure changed by 'Starbucks on every corner' debt fueled expansions.

Badly run chains now screwed by debt burden and clogging the highstreets. Rents still keeping out traditional providers.

It just seems insane that this was ever allowed (by the lenders) to happen.

Happened to a company I worked for - bought by a PE firm when our business had already started to decline. I thought we'd go bust, but with incredible timing we were sold to a large multinational just before the back-side dropped out the business completely. It's all gone now.

The thing is that the good PE and VCs are phenominal. They can run businesses extremely well and if they need additional funding or resources it is there. But, because there is so much to be earned in fees it obviously attracts many others who are not good. In the easy times they can raise large amounts of money and they will fund events which they lack the skills to control.

In addition to this the classic asset strip and selling off of the firms' foundations to make a fast buck to be distrubuted to the board as options payouts or bonuses has also driven over a decade of gutting long established and robust businesses of their ability to weather the downturns.