Creditors of G Retail meet in Sydney this afternoon to find out the first
snapshot of the company’s financial position and to discuss whether the stores,
especially the one on the corner of Market and George Street in
Sydney, can be
saved. Or
rather, whether the retail business licensed from Gowing Bros.
in the store, can be saved. If I
was a betting man, I’d be saying no. Cut your losses: put it at around $4.5
million and move on.

Those
tax losses might be more valuable than any attempt to keep trading given the
questionable attitude from the former parent, Gowing
Bros., to the continuation of retailing on the site.

Yesterday, the
administrators announced that the store at Wynyard, just down George Street in the CBD, would be closed.
It should have been shut years ago – here’s an AAP report on the decision.

Gowing Bros., whose board includes
John Gowing, the former CEO of the company when it was
a retailer and an investor, controls the destiny of G Retail and its creditors.
Hopefully that will be made clear later today.

John
Gowing is responsible for many of the problems with an
ill-timed expansion of the chain before it was split from the parent and
licensed five years ago. That
enabled the property owning, share investing Gowing
Bros. to boost earnings and dividends to shareholders, including Mr Gowing and the family, while
cutting free the underperforming retail business (which was his
responsibility).

There’s
talk in Sydney of Gowing Bros. wanting to do other
things with the valuable site: other tenants, including Gowing Bros. are reportedly looking to leave and it could be
worth millions of dollars more if redeveloped into an office
block.

A
heritage order should be slapped on it just to make this shabby move that much
more difficult.