Wednesday 24 December 2008

Who is going under during the Brown Bust?

I am assuming here that the Brown Bust lasts from 3rd quarter 2008 to 2nd quarter 2010. Most of the list are put together from the following factors (most of them are Brown mistakes) -

1 - expanding during a boom with no thought of a slowdown
2 - overdependent on 1 revenue source
3 - not modernising
4 - The Brown classic - taking on way, way too much debt.

I reckon most of these that fail, will be picked up by another organisation as demonstrated by Whittards and officer club this week.

High Street

Burton - (Green closes this down)
Tie Rack
Waterstones (HMV closes this down)
Zavvi - obviously!
Cafe Nero
Focus (DIY)
Plumbase (part of Grafton Grp)
Wickes (part of Travis Perkins)
Borders


Woolworths - GONE
MFI - GONE
Whittards - Private Equity sale
The Officers Club - Management buy out

Sports

Formula 1 - way too expensive, dependent on Ad revenue and owned by a massively indebted organisation.
Manchester United - over £600 million in debt
Liverpool - owes £350 million to RBS and Wachovia to be renegotiated in 2009
Chelsea - owes Abramovitch £550 million and he is going under.

Right - that will do for now. Must add some mobile phone companies later today

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interested in the view that Abramovitch is going under. Can you give some clues/directions to why?

CROWN said...

Totally groundless theory I'm afraid. I reckon most of those Russian Oligarchs owe most of their 'fortune' to the value of their heavily indebted companies. They have lavished so much of their money on luxuries and further ventures involving more borrowing, that if the banks pull the plug on some obscure venture somewhere, the whole house of cards will come down.

Anonymous said...

Bugger, you were getting my hopes up.

I think football clubs might "go under" but only in the sense of being sold on by bankrupt owners. Certainly Man United & Liverpool are huge income streams, arguably regardless of economic fortunes.