BOOM!!!! Financial Meltdown!

[Matt]

MFI and Woolworths are calling in the administrators. TBH it's came as quite a surprise how precariously these big companies are balanced.

[Spatial]

Woolies is a bit of a British institution really (almost every high street has one) so it's a shame to see it go down the pan.

No more Anthrax in the pic and mix or trying to find what you wanted in a store layout that was clearly sketched out by a demented mad man on the cuff of his straight jacket.

[Holio]

Woolies is a bit of a British institution really (almost every high street has one) so it's a shame to see it go down the pan.

No more Anthrax in the pic and mix or trying to find what you wanted in a store layout that was clearly sketched out by a demented mad man on the cuff of his straight jacket.

There was an offer of 50 million last year or earlier this year for it, but they declined, now they saying it could be sold of a pound.

Amen to that last bit though, layout wise, they is no sense nor logic to any of it!

[Matt]

I'm pretty sure I could scrape together a quid to buy the company....

[Largo]

wonder if they will flog all their console game stock sometime soon

[EJG1980]

The Woolies on our high street closed down a few weeks ago. Didn't see if they had any video game bargains as the queues went all the way down the street and they were only letting in a few people at a time. I couldn't be arsed to queue up!

Sad as it had always been my first port of call for games when I was a kid and I bought my very first console (one that I paid for myself) from there; a SNES with Super Wrestlemania

It's being replaced by a Tesco Express, or Metro, whatever they're called, much to the delight of the Budgens a few doors down I'm sure.

[huxley]

Having been a store manager of five years in Woolies (I left last year btw) this comes as no surprize. Over the last two years working for them, communication to stores was so messed up that every action given contradicted it self. Some of the price cutting actions taken where utter madness. I blame one man - Trevor Bish Jones! The man has the social skills of a piece of rotten fruit and the buisness brain of a chimp.
Good news is some American firm will no doubt buy back the chain and get it up on its feet again. And Frank W can rest easy.

[NekoFever]

I always wonder how companies can get into hundreds of millions of debt. Maybe it's just me, as someone who gets nervous when I have a couple of hundred quid on the credit card, but I don't see how you can keep getting deeper and deeper into a hole like that and not realise that borrowing more is going to make it worse. They should have taken action when they started taking less than they were spending, but because they can borrow borrow borrow they're content to continue like that.

Still, I hope the one good thing to come out of this credit crunch when we eventually get through it is that people will stop treating credit like free money to live outside their means. There are too many people who have no money left after they pay the mortgage that they can't afford and make the payment on the new car that they're paying interest on who have relied on the fact that anyone can get as much money as they want on credit.

Hopefully there will be more stringent checks to see who can actually get it when we come through this. You shouldn't be able to get a new credit card when you already owe the equivalent of a year's salary the various credit companies, but it's been too easy for too long to do just that.

[Darwock]

You're kidding me, Woolies has gone bust??? I grew up in the Orkney Islands, where Woolies is just about the only shop there is - my first ever part time job was in there.. I can't believe it

[wonderboy]

When i heard of Woolsworths demise. I could help, but wonder how all those pick 'n'mix sweets people have taken over the decades. Really did mount up...

Seriously though, it did come as a bit of realization that retail shops are in trouble. Banks get taken over, or hide how much money they really have, but when shops start closing down. You know where in trouble...

Anyone here reckon. We will see some investigations, documentaries in next five, to ten years. About these US, European etc bail-outs. I guessing one of the titles will be, "the Worlds great Bank robbery"..?

I do agree with what Chain mentioned before, the "have it now" point. My Mum always taught me, if you haven't got the money. You can't have it, save up..!

One last thing that puzzles me, you can't really have an on going good economy, anywhere. Everything has to go up and down, like everything in life. I can't think of a time, when there was sustained, even economy..?

[abigsmurf]

you can't have an ongoing good economy due to human nature. People find a hot industry to invest in, that industry gets more and more investment until its output peaks. When the output peaks, the investments go from 10% a year growth to next to no growth. Due to inflation that means people start effectively losing money on their investments. People then pull their money out of that industry, the industry slumps as a result of no investment and it brings down supporting industries, spreading the damage further. No one invests in anything because of instability and the economy stops growing.

To be honest, there's nothing especially bad about this particular slump (at least so far). It's just my generation (20-30) has never knowingly experienced one before. That and the frenzied media coverage.

It's also only partly the bank's fault. If people hadn't been so greedy with their houses (treating them as investments, buying council houses for £60K, selling for £200K) the house pricing crash wouldn't have mattered too much (heck would've made it cheaper for me to get a house). However people haven't been paying their mortgages and have been borrowing beyond their means which means the lending market has collapsed. If everyone had paid their mortgages ok, this crash wouldn't have happened.

[PrayforMojo]

Firstly, my thoughts go out to the 30,000 or so employees whose jobs are at risk at Woolies. Never a good time to lose your job, but this news breaking just before Christmas must be a real kick in the teeth for them.

But just from a personal point of view, I'd be heartbroken if we end up losing Woolies presence on the high street. Maybe you have to be of a certain age to appreciate just how exciting Woolies was as a kid. It specialised in everything - from CDs, cassettes, games, toys, pick 'n mix to garden furniture. A trip to Woolies was a real treat when you were young. Like visiting Santa's grotto, or something.

Though I have to confess I haven't walked into one of their stores for ages. I did order a Xbox 360 120gb hard drive from them recently, but I did that online. Great service, too. I do have to admit to feeling a little guilty, though. Perhaps I should have got off my arse and supported them a little bit more. The problem is as an adult they've become a bit of an irrelevance to me. What products they sell seemed truly wonderful when I was ten, but now they just seem to specialise in tat, and thanks to the interweb, you can usually get things like CDs and DVDs cheaper elsewhere.

Still, a little bit of my soul died when I heard this news yesterday.

[VR46]

Not read all the above posts, but being a thirty-something I remember Woolworths quite fondly, at the end of the day they don't sell anything you can't buy (cheaper) in Tesco's and the like, which was probably ultimately the final nail in the coffin.

A sad day, and loads more people out of work

[Nijo]

Woolies is a bit of a British institution really (almost every high street has one) so it's a shame to see it go down the pan.

Woolworths originated in America, but it did open its first UK branch a loooooooong time ago. I remember being surprised seeing it in Oh Brother Where Art Thou - didn't realise it had such a history in the States. But let's face it, it was always pretty crap.

MFI is gone too btw.

[ChrisF]

Sweet sweet justice for putting Jackie Chan in an advert with some stupid puppets.