Sunday, 26 November 2017 - 4:37pm
This week, I have been mostly not reading. Have a go at this to tide you over till next week:
- America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning — Matt Townsend, Jenny Surane, Emma Orr and Christopher Cannon in Bloomberg:
The reason isn’t as simple as Amazon.com Inc. taking market share or twenty-somethings spending more on experiences than things. The root cause is that many of these long-standing chains are overloaded with debt—often from leveraged buyouts led by private equity firms. There are billions in borrowings on the balance sheets of troubled retailers, and sustaining that load is only going to become harder—even for healthy chains. The debt coming due, along with America’s over-stored suburbs and the continued gains of online shopping, has all the makings of a disaster. The spillover will likely flow far and wide across the U.S. economy. There will be displaced low-income workers, shrinking local tax bases and investor losses on stocks, bonds and real estate. If today is considered a retail apocalypse, then what’s coming next could truly be scary.