The wonder of a Woolworths administration – part two

Rumblings persist concerning the way that the administration of Woolworths was handled, something that we raised in our blog back in December 2008. Indeed Woolworth’s former management have now added their voices to those who believe that more efforts could have been made by the administrators, Deloittes, to keep the giant store group afloat questioning whether there was a conflict of interest in their provision of advice to the company’s banking syndicate prior to their appointment as administrators. Not surprisingly Deloittes have robustly defended their actions, pointing out that the business simply ran out of money, and that they had been called in with the management’s blessing.


Nobody is pretending that Woolworths was the best run company in the world. However the negative impact of its closure on many high streets up and down the country, and the fact that newly established imitators such as Alworths and Wellworths have seemingly thrived, indicate that the general public placed more value on Woolworths than the financial community apparently did.

With an upsurge in insolvencies expected in 2010, insolvency practitioners will face even more challenges in deciding how terminal the decline of such businesses is, and how far they can go in keeping them alive, whilst not being seen to reward poor management. I wish them all the luck in the world – they are going to need it.