Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.

Michael Winner takes it all!

And all this on the day Findus * and World of Leather go into Administration! So we won't be able to sit on red leather settees eating fish fingers to cheer ourselves up!

* Not a Latin name but an amalgam of "Food INDUStries".

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.

Michael Winner takes it all!

And all this on the day Findus * and World of Leather go into Administration! So we won't be able to sit on red leather settees eating fish fingers to cheer ourselves up!

* Not a Latin name but an amalgam of "Food INDUStries".

The Wonder which was Woolies

Woolworths is due to close some 99 years after the first UK store opened on 5th November 1909 in Liverpool. For many years the slogan invited you to experience the “Wonder of Woolies”. Growing up in Dublin the large Woolworth’s store on Henry Street was a wonderland with a huge retail area and a display far slicker than its Irish rivals. It was also the shop where you could find everything with a far wider range than any other Irish retailer and for a kid it had the biggest and best range of toys. It also had the best store cafeteria in Dublin, a gleaming example of modernity compared to its home grown rivals. For many it was the benchmark in retailing and with its structured training programme (when such things were uncommon) it is where many in the retail industry learnt their trade.

However Woolies, under Kingfisher and its asset stripping management, pulled out of Ireland destroying their flagship store by subdividing it for development. However it has been trading elsewhere on its laurels for years with a lack of identity and the whole shop became a “Pick & Mix” of strange products few of which it was competing on effectively as more nimble retailers and the supermarkets eat into its market share. Shoppers who flocked there for the “50% Closing Down” sale have been disappointed as the “up to” in small letters on the poster meant popular lines such CDs were only reduced 10% and many of these were not mainstream as in “No name sings Perry Como! Ironically, its closing down offers produced the best sales figures in its 95-year history. The chain took a record £27million on the first day of the sale.

In Ireland there was a further twist to the Woolworths tale. Just as Dunnes Stores copied Marks & Spencer with its "St. Bernard" brand imitating "St. Michael" in Northern Ireland there was a copy cat operation with the same "look and feel" called "Wellworths" a name they were able to keep despite several legal actions by Woolworths. Indeed they thrived with 16 stores and were bought over by Tesco 3 years ago.

Sir Geoff Mulcahy, the chairman of the British Retail Consortium and the man who ran Woolworths for two decades, has attacked the retailer's administrator for allowing the group to fail. Sir Geoff branded as "disgraceful" Deloitte's decision to close down all 807 of Woolworths' stores with the likely loss of 27,000 jobs. He said the chain could have been saved.

Deloitte said yesterday that all the stores will close by January 5, barring an unlikely last minute intervention from a buyer. The administrator is in talks with other retailers to sell the stores individually, but the Woolworths name is all but guaranteed to disappear from Britain's high streets in 18 days' time. Sir Geoff, who bought Woolworths in 1982 and demerged the chain from his Kingfisher conglomerate in 2001, said: "The whole thing is disgraceful – there are a lot of losers in the situation. The whole administrative process needs to be looked at as there are two businesses here that could have been made profitable."


Woolworths, Grafton St. Dublin

The second business is Entertainment UK (EUK), Woolworths' distribution division that is also in administration. Deloitte is still talking to possible buyers. Some retail historians will see Sir Geoff's comments as surprising. One of the last things that Kingfisher did prior to demerging Woolworths in 2001 was to sell 182 of the chain's freeholds, saddling the retailer with rents. Some observers claim that this move sowed the seeds for the chain's long-term demise.

Woolworths' stores will close between December 27 and January 5 in tranches of 200 for logistic reasons. Staff have been told and will be paid until the end of the year. Deloitte has put the Pension Protection Fund, the Government's pension’s lifeboat, on alert about the closures. It has also set up a specialist team in Edinburgh to deal with redundancy claims. More than 500 former suppliers to Woolworths and EUK have made claims for money to Deloitte.



Going into the sale in my local Woolies I was there mostly out of curiosity because recently I have only bought bits and pieces there. It has been a cruel year for retail with names like Rosebys, MFI, Ethel Austin, Mark One and now Woolworths disappearing. And the predictions are that there will be many more casualties in the New Year proving the truth of what Warren Buffet said “When the tide goes out you know who has been swimming naked!” It was hard not to be amused by the remnants of corporate hubris; The security stickers saying “We are protecting our product to protect the price” and the new slogan “Woolworth – Well Worth it.” Well no buyer thought so. But even in its last days there was evidence of how bad a retail proposition Woolworths has become. From many examples I could pick I’ll stick with one. It had the James Bond DVDs priced at £12.00 less 10% which is £10.80 each. Elsewhere in the centre HMV, which is not closing down, had them priced a £5.00! I left without buying anything, for me there was no longer any Wonder at Woolies.

The Wonder which was Woolies

Woolworths is due to close some 99 years after the first UK store opened on 5th November 1909 in Liverpool. For many years the slogan invited you to experience the “Wonder of Woolies”. Growing up in Dublin the large Woolworth’s store on Henry Street was a wonderland with a huge retail area and a display far slicker than its Irish rivals. It was also the shop where you could find everything with a far wider range than any other Irish retailer and for a kid it had the biggest and best range of toys. It also had the best store cafeteria in Dublin, a gleaming example of modernity compared to its home grown rivals. For many it was the benchmark in retailing and with its structured training programme (when such things were uncommon) it is where many in the retail industry learnt their trade.

However Woolies, under Kingfisher and its asset stripping management, pulled out of Ireland destroying their flagship store by subdividing it for development. However it has been trading elsewhere on its laurels for years with a lack of identity and the whole shop became a “Pick & Mix” of strange products few of which it was competing on effectively as more nimble retailers and the supermarkets eat into its market share. Shoppers who flocked there for the “50% Closing Down” sale have been disappointed as the “up to” in small letters on the poster meant popular lines such CDs were only reduced 10% and many of these were not mainstream as in “No name sings Perry Como! Ironically, its closing down offers produced the best sales figures in its 95-year history. The chain took a record £27million on the first day of the sale.

In Ireland there was a further twist to the Woolworths tale. Just as Dunnes Stores copied Marks & Spencer with its "St. Bernard" brand imitating "St. Michael" in Northern Ireland there was a copy cat operation with the same "look and feel" called "Wellworths" a name they were able to keep despite several legal actions by Woolworths. Indeed they thrived with 16 stores and were bought over by Tesco 3 years ago.

Sir Geoff Mulcahy, the chairman of the British Retail Consortium and the man who ran Woolworths for two decades, has attacked the retailer's administrator for allowing the group to fail. Sir Geoff branded as "disgraceful" Deloitte's decision to close down all 807 of Woolworths' stores with the likely loss of 27,000 jobs. He said the chain could have been saved.

Deloitte said yesterday that all the stores will close by January 5, barring an unlikely last minute intervention from a buyer. The administrator is in talks with other retailers to sell the stores individually, but the Woolworths name is all but guaranteed to disappear from Britain's high streets in 18 days' time. Sir Geoff, who bought Woolworths in 1982 and demerged the chain from his Kingfisher conglomerate in 2001, said: "The whole thing is disgraceful – there are a lot of losers in the situation. The whole administrative process needs to be looked at as there are two businesses here that could have been made profitable."


Woolworths, Grafton St. Dublin

The second business is Entertainment UK (EUK), Woolworths' distribution division that is also in administration. Deloitte is still talking to possible buyers. Some retail historians will see Sir Geoff's comments as surprising. One of the last things that Kingfisher did prior to demerging Woolworths in 2001 was to sell 182 of the chain's freeholds, saddling the retailer with rents. Some observers claim that this move sowed the seeds for the chain's long-term demise.

Woolworths' stores will close between December 27 and January 5 in tranches of 200 for logistic reasons. Staff have been told and will be paid until the end of the year. Deloitte has put the Pension Protection Fund, the Government's pension’s lifeboat, on alert about the closures. It has also set up a specialist team in Edinburgh to deal with redundancy claims. More than 500 former suppliers to Woolworths and EUK have made claims for money to Deloitte.



Going into the sale in my local Woolies I was there mostly out of curiosity because recently I have only bought bits and pieces there. It has been a cruel year for retail with names like Rosebys, MFI, Ethel Austin, Mark One and now Woolworths disappearing. And the predictions are that there will be many more casualties in the New Year proving the truth of what Warren Buffet said “When the tide goes out you know who has been swimming naked!” It was hard not to be amused by the remnants of corporate hubris; The security stickers saying “We are protecting our product to protect the price” and the new slogan “Woolworth – Well Worth it.” Well no buyer thought so. But even in its last days there was evidence of how bad a retail proposition Woolworths has become. From many examples I could pick I’ll stick with one. It had the James Bond DVDs priced at £12.00 less 10% which is £10.80 each. Elsewhere in the centre HMV, which is not closing down, had them priced a £5.00! I left without buying anything, for me there was no longer any Wonder at Woolies.

Economic Crisis Update

Luckily the Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Deputy Chancellor Alistair Darling have kept on top of events since, led from the front and not looked like rabbits caught in headlights; There is no shubshitite fur eshperience ash Ghordon ofthen sheys!


A financial crisis unmatched since the Great Depression, say analysts

Guardian, London, March 18th 2008

A century after John Pierpont Morgan rescued the New York stockmarket from a 50% sell off in share prices, his blue-blooded Wall Street bank was yesterday once again at the heart of attempts to contain the deepening global financial crisis.

In an echo of the "bankers' panic" of 1907, JP Morgan responded to what is being billed as a meltdown of historic proportions by agreeing to buy its stricken rival, Bear Stearns.

The length and severity of the crisis that broke over global markets last summer has had analysts delving into their history books. George Soros, who was largely responsible for Black Wednesday, the last bout of serious financial turmoil to afflict the UK, believes there has been nothing to match the events of the past nine months since the Great Depression.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Fed and the man blamed by many for setting off the boom-bust in the US housing market, agrees with the man who broke the Bank of England. Writing in the Financial Times yesterday, Greenspan said: "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war."

The first 25 years after the war were relatively trouble free. Britain had devalued the pound in 1949 and 1967, but the first real systemic threat to the financial system arrived in 1973 with the secondary banking crisis that affected the "fringe banks" that had provided money to speculators during the property boom. When the crash came, the Bank of England launched a "lifeboat" to prevent the crisis spreading.

Similar action by the Federal Reserve in 1998 contained the fallout from the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that lost money in the aftermath of Russia's decision to default on its debts. By comparison with recent events, LTCM now seems to be a minor market wobble.

Students of the markets say the only recent parallel with the current turmoil is Japan in the 1990s, but other than that they have had to study the 1930s, when 9,000 banks failed, 1907 when JP Morgan told Wall Street enough was enough after a 50% drop in shares, and even to the series of economic and financial upheavals during the final quarter of the 19th century.

New York Fed Warns On Hedge Funds

New York Times - May 3, 2007

In what Reuters describes as its “sternest warning to date” on the state of the hedge-fund business, the New York Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the funds could represent the biggest risk for a financial crisis since 1998, when the implosion of Long-Term Capital Management threatened global markets.

“Recent high correlations among hedge fund returns could suggest concentrations of risk comparable to those preceding the hedge fund crisis of 1998,” according to a paper written by Tobias Adrian, capital markets economist at the central bank.

Regulation — or lack thereof — of the $1.4 trillion industry has become a battle ground for regulators and lawmakers. The meltdown of Long-Term Capital is often cited as a cautionary tale by those arguing for more oversight of the lightly-regulated investment pools. The crisis at Long-Term Capital took the market by surprise and resulted in The Fed forcing an unprecedented $3.6 billion bailout.

The Fed’s latest worry arose from what it described as a rising correlation between the actual returns of hedge funds, which could point to similar trading strategies that excessively concentrate risk on too few market positions.

Economic Crisis Update

Luckily the Chancellor Gordon Brown and the Deputy Chancellor Alistair Darling have kept on top of events since, led from the front and not looked like rabbits caught in headlights; There is no shubshitite fur eshperience ash Ghordon ofthen sheys!


A financial crisis unmatched since the Great Depression, say analysts

Guardian, London, March 18th 2008

A century after John Pierpont Morgan rescued the New York stockmarket from a 50% sell off in share prices, his blue-blooded Wall Street bank was yesterday once again at the heart of attempts to contain the deepening global financial crisis.

In an echo of the "bankers' panic" of 1907, JP Morgan responded to what is being billed as a meltdown of historic proportions by agreeing to buy its stricken rival, Bear Stearns.

The length and severity of the crisis that broke over global markets last summer has had analysts delving into their history books. George Soros, who was largely responsible for Black Wednesday, the last bout of serious financial turmoil to afflict the UK, believes there has been nothing to match the events of the past nine months since the Great Depression.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Fed and the man blamed by many for setting off the boom-bust in the US housing market, agrees with the man who broke the Bank of England. Writing in the Financial Times yesterday, Greenspan said: "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war."

The first 25 years after the war were relatively trouble free. Britain had devalued the pound in 1949 and 1967, but the first real systemic threat to the financial system arrived in 1973 with the secondary banking crisis that affected the "fringe banks" that had provided money to speculators during the property boom. When the crash came, the Bank of England launched a "lifeboat" to prevent the crisis spreading.

Similar action by the Federal Reserve in 1998 contained the fallout from the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that lost money in the aftermath of Russia's decision to default on its debts. By comparison with recent events, LTCM now seems to be a minor market wobble.

Students of the markets say the only recent parallel with the current turmoil is Japan in the 1990s, but other than that they have had to study the 1930s, when 9,000 banks failed, 1907 when JP Morgan told Wall Street enough was enough after a 50% drop in shares, and even to the series of economic and financial upheavals during the final quarter of the 19th century.

New York Fed Warns On Hedge Funds

New York Times - May 3, 2007

In what Reuters describes as its “sternest warning to date” on the state of the hedge-fund business, the New York Federal Reserve said Wednesday that the funds could represent the biggest risk for a financial crisis since 1998, when the implosion of Long-Term Capital Management threatened global markets.

“Recent high correlations among hedge fund returns could suggest concentrations of risk comparable to those preceding the hedge fund crisis of 1998,” according to a paper written by Tobias Adrian, capital markets economist at the central bank.

Regulation — or lack thereof — of the $1.4 trillion industry has become a battle ground for regulators and lawmakers. The meltdown of Long-Term Capital is often cited as a cautionary tale by those arguing for more oversight of the lightly-regulated investment pools. The crisis at Long-Term Capital took the market by surprise and resulted in The Fed forcing an unprecedented $3.6 billion bailout.

The Fed’s latest worry arose from what it described as a rising correlation between the actual returns of hedge funds, which could point to similar trading strategies that excessively concentrate risk on too few market positions.