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I think your view on landlords is very naive and indicates a lack of experience in dealing with them. Many of these landlords have vast portfolios, for example around Oxford St and any decision they make will be judged against the potential impact of all of their portfolio in that area. In addition, a few larger tenants have negotiated clauses that automatically give them a rent reduction in the event of the landlord reducing neighbouring rents to a lower level including via a CVA. It is often not a one dimensional decision for them and they have a lot of clout. I speak from have recently concluded a negotiation with one of the major landlords. The West End of London.
The theory is very good but you are not dealing with a small landlord here and you just cannot get out of lease that easy Hence CVA may happen
The BOD should alll be fired and charged with somerhing.If i was in charge I would have made this company generate at least 150 million with no debts.
Look rates are decided by floor space.A contact of mine who works for Debs told me the 4 story building pays out 1.2 MILLION every year.
If they got rid of the top 2 floors and apply for NDR empty property relief. They would save 600000.
Multiply that by 180 you get a saving of at least a 65 TO 80 million !!!! think about that/
Also fire 5 employees from every store and remove pointless admin jobs.you get another saving of 18 million.
I work for a certain organization and a review found huge savings in streamlining work practices and the same job is done by 60% of the previous workforce.
Also landlords can be bought to heel by simply not paying rent and making them take you to court and then you do a renegotiation at the last minute for a rent holiday and reduced rents as nobody wants to waste time and money on expensive blood sucking lawyers and MOST IMPORTANTLY it will wake up the landlords to reality in a way which can not be exceeded by trying to negotiate with them.
These suggestions need to be sent to them.How can I do this?
There will be no dividends for many years even if they manage to survive in fact the board have mismanaged buy in effect borrowing cash to pay the dividends and to make matters worse the divis paid over last few years is more than the market cap of the company very clever board who have failed in every aspect new captain and crew required
Compacting Store is not that easy to get rates reduced as the lease states the size of the premises and the lease holders name therefore you cannot save on rates without either subletting part of the store and having a lease in place for new tenant and or spitting up into separate units and applying to have premises re rated but still have to get permission from landowner
Esecallum, I think you’ll find if you research things that MA was one of the ones calling for the dividend to be dropped in order to better stabilise the business
he bought to get a dividend which has now been canelled.Simple.
You don't need to close a store.Just compactify it and you will save hundreds of thousands on business rates alone plus heating lighting cleaning and rent.
I went to a debs store.Very wide aisles you could drive a bus through.no wonder their costs are huge and profits non existant.
The BOD needs to get out and implement some hard changes or be fired.
Is there any way i could contact them and get my ideas implemented as they seem bankrupt of any common sense.
He will not bid? So why buy 29.9%? It doesn't really add up..
Nice to see another (!) new poster here... Large stores work for Harrods, John Lewis etc. Agree though the 4-5 floor stores are not the future and in many cases Debenhams should close or switch to smaller more modern stores. It's easier said than done though to close 30 odd massive stores and expect the landlords to find a replacement retailer.. many via a mixture of smaller retailers on each floor or office/student flats but each store will be different (location etc)
He said in a press statement in 2018 he will NOT BID.
Also Mike Ashley will NOT. He confirmed he prefers to throw things of a cliff and assemble the parts he wants.His history also confirms it.
Debs need to do some hard work instead of drifting along.They need to compactify their stores.Do you really need floors 4 and 5 and and pay business rates of hundreds of thousands of pounds per store.Very stupid.Instead of having 3 billion turnover and zero profit.Hve a more manegable 600 to 800 billion turnover and make a hundred million profit.
They need to fire all the middle management and incentavize the local store managers to show profits for every store.
If every store only made a profits of only half a million .That would be 80 million. Excluding the norway store.
I showed in the below post this can be done easily.
“ Mike Ashley will not bid. He confirmed he prefers to throw things of a cliff and assemble the parts he wants.”
Looking at the state of HoF I think he must of lost the instruction manual
Also Mike Ashley will not bid. He confirmed he prefers to throw things of a cliff and assemble the parts he wants.
When has he stated clearly that he will be bidding for Debenhams please? IMO he probably will but I cannot recall him saying it in black and white. If so, you would expect a pre bid premium here...
Well he’s examining the books at the moment. He’s amassed a £1bn war chest He’s already bought 30% of the shares He’s stated publicly that he wants to take over DEB and merge it with HOF DEB’s BOD won’t like it and no doubt they’ll be the first to go but does he care? There’s only only one thing left to do