Poundland in Rescue Talks With 12,000 Jobs at Stake
The management team is attempting a buyout of the chain, which has about 600 stores across the United Kingdom and Ireland and employs around 12,000 people, with an Irish property development group named as its preferred partner. A union says it has “deep concerns” the business could enter administration if the deal fails.
The chain was sold for a single pound last summer by its former owner to a restructuring specialist, which is now looking for a buyer of its own — a reminder that a nominal price buys a liability, not a bargain. Bally Auluk of the shopworkers’ union Usdaw said members had deep concerns about administration and that “we are told that their offers are being turned down”, a claim a Poundland source disputes on the record. The managing director Barry Williams is working with Andy Bond, who formerly chaired the group’s owner. The company expects sales to rise more than 3% this year, which is the argument for the business being viable in the right hands. Discount retail is supposed to do well when budgets tighten, so a chain of this size needing rescue in a year of rising prices says something about the state of the high street rather than about the format. Watch whether the preferred partner converts into an actual offer, because the alternative on the table is administration.