Are you a retailer or multiple shop owner with serious financial problems? Rents due for payment and sales falling?

Talk to us now about how we can help multiple retailers and other types of retail business restructure and cut loss making activity.

We can determine lease obligations, remove staff at low cost and negotiate with your bank!  Read our 82 page experts guide to CVAs

Retail sales falling

Clinton Cards is the latest retailer to collapse into administration with 784 stores and 3000 staff.  350 stores are to be shut down by June

It seems too that when times get tough the marginal or secondary site stores suffer most, so how do you get rid of those?

Without recourse to shareholders for capital or debt/bond facilities to ride out the storm many larger groups are entering protective insolvency, closing stores or trying to survive by restructuring.

Fragility is the order of the day for undercapitalised companies, meeting bank covenants, meeting rent quarter days and paying VAT /PAYE when due are impossible juggling acts to achieve when cash take at the till is below budget.

So how can KSA help a retailer restructure?

Where a retail group has a number of badly performing stores but the remainder are viable/profitable then it is enormously difficult to stop the haemorrhage of cash (even if the bad stores are shut down, rent and overheads are still payable). Normally a retailer can only hope that the landlord will let the company assign or surrender the lease, obviously the landlord’s business requires tenants paying rent, not empty properties. Too many vacant properties could mean that their business model is not viable.

With the inherent power of the lease they will be very unlikely to allow surrender without a price being paid. Even assignment may lead to future problems if the assignee is not financially strong.

Using a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) we have helped companies to exit those non performing properties/shopping centres and terminate the formal lease, thus crystallising the liability. Rent payments are stopped and the landlord can be prevented from taking recovery action.

We are often asked - how can this approach work?

It is vital that the proposals are cogently structured and careful financial forecasts are prepared in support of the CVA proposal, then detailed negotiations must commence with the landlord to seek surrender or termination of the lease, if this is not forthcoming then the company should consider exiting the property before finalising/ publishing the CVA proposal.

KSA helps our clients with deal structure, turnaround management, building the proposals and forecasts, driving the deal with creditors and helping the board through the crisis. Please note that it is not generally necessary for Administration or Receivership to be used for this approach! Thus it is cost effective and powerful with negligible cashflow consequences. Stock and fixtures (as long as not landlord’s improvements) can be used elsewhere in profitable stores.

Talk to us now, call Iain Campbell or Keith Steven for more details: 0800 9700 539

Want to know more about KSA Group?

See here for client case studies. See here for what our clients say about us.

Retailer CVA Case Studies

Midlands: £1m sales Bathroom and Kitchen Products
London based Multiple Furniture and Design Retailer

"Keith we will gladly give anyone a glowing reference for KSA Group, what you achieved for our company was excellent. Now we are away from the high rent mall shops our factory shops are doing really well. Without your help in reorganising the company's store mix and debt, I know that we would have gone into liquidation"

A quote from the managing director of a mid sized fashion chain with high street, mall and factory outlets, we closed all the non performing stores and helped him save his company. He will vouch for KSA Group's work, why not give us a call now?  0800 9700539 or you can call Keith Steven on his mobile 07974 086779