USC called into Administration
Another day, another large retailer gone to the wall. This time its high end clothing retailer USC with 58 Uk stores including two in Northern Ireland.
This time however there is a glimmer of hope as the current owners have worked out a deal with Administrators PKF to buy back 43 of the stores saving over 1000 jobs.
USC was purchased in 2004 by West Coast Capital, a venture capitalist run by one of the UK richest men, Sir Tom Hunter for around STG£45 Million. It is believed that Dundonald Holdings LTD the new company taking over the chain is also ran by Sir Tom Hunter.
The remaining stores will be ran in the interim by the Administrators until a buyer can be found, my thinking on these store is that if the current management buy back does not want them, then know-one will, after all they [the management] know the business better than most !
The only hope for these remaining stores is that the leases will be sold on to a larger retail but with more and more retailers hitting the bricks and going to the wall, once much valued lease holdings are now not to valuable anymore.
I will compile a list later of ten companies which I feel will run into the major problems in 2009.
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