The person, Dick Smith, will not be affected ... Company founder Dick Smith has not owned shares in the company since he sold it to Woolworths for about $25 million in 1982 ... but Anchorage Capital Partners (and their investors) may feel the pain.
cheers - John
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2006 Discovery 3 TDV6 SE Auto - 2008 23ft Golden Eagle Hunter Some people feel the rain - the others just get wet - Bob Dylan
Anchorage listed the company on the stock exchange about 18 months ago, so it is owned by mainly Mum and Dad investors. It was a great company until Woolies stuffed it up and decided to compete with Harvey Norman and then JB HIFI. For this reason corporate investors shied away from DS.
The problem is the company was badly under capitalized after Woolies owned it and spent more than it made, relying on its large Bank loans to stay afloat. Its MD constantly made poor buying decisions and got rid of many store (hence people complaining about poor service) and management staff.
My son is a store manager with DS and yesterday in a national conference call they were told it was all the fault of their contract buyers (not employees of DS) based in Hong Kong who had over purchased. They then had the unsuccessful garage sale just prior to Xmas.
Yesterday arvo the store managers were told the Banks had put DS into receivership. Its VERY unlikely that anyone will buy the company as its traded unprofitably for some months now. So the staff will be made redundant and the shareholders will loose their money. The only ones likely to get their money back will be the Banks. Staff will eventually get paid their redundancy, holiday pay and outstanding wages from the taxpayer through the govt wages guarantee fund - although it wont likely happen until late this year when the receivers (who will also make good money) have wound the company up
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Cheers Bruce
The amazing things you see when nomading Australia
Woolies didn't stuff it up they sold for 125 million a year later it was worth 525 million then anchorage took out all the profit and basically ran it into the ground.
I think something is gonna hit the fan on this one. When Anchorage listed it on the Stock Exchange, they valued it at $520 million. Apparently this valuation is to be investigated. They will have to justify how the value jumped from their purchase price of $125 million to $520 million overnight !!!
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Retired Airline Pilot and Electrician..
I'm not old, I've just been young a long time....Ken
Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
As has been already said, they stopped being a great store when they stopped selling electronic components and became just another consumer goods retailer.
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Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
There was a clue back on the 18th August 2015 when the price dropped .28c on the day, smart investors were getting out and cutting their losses, on the 28th Oct the price fell another .21 cents to .84c with very high volume, someone had heard something and the stock was being dumped.
The writing was on the wall on October 28th, all of the smart investors were getting out, the mums and dads held on hoping for a recovery, however there is a saying in the stock market, bad news is usually followed by more bad news and on the 30th of Nov it happened, the price plummeted another .38 cents to close at .28 cents, people were getting out at any price, the game was as good as over.
Still time to salvage a fraction of your initial investment, however the optimists held on hoping for a miracle that never came, on Monday of this week shares in DSH were placed in a trading halt, end of game.
I think something is gonna hit the fan on this one. When Anchorage listed it on the Stock Exchange, they valued it at $520 million. Apparently this valuation is to be investigated. They will have to justify how the value jumped from their purchase price of $125 million to $520 million overnight !!!
they sold all the stock to make it look good then closed stores then had it valued by an "independent valuer"
-- Edited by dogbox on Wednesday 6th of January 2016 03:31:08 PM