Vulture Fund Closes The Body Shop and Employees Left without their wages

This did not go as they wished

Not getting paid for work done?

Well, contents of till and safe commandeered.

As well as all high value stock.

Ebay closing down sale.

Divide amongst employees.

Very good question!

How do you think the German vulture fund are making a “quick buck”?

From what I can see they’ve lost their shirt on this investment.

They’re not. The law allows them to do this. In fact, the law encourages them to do this

They’ll simply claim they have no money, go into liquidation, and the other creditors have a legal entitlement to the liquidation of the assets than the staff don’t.

Taxpayer will end up paying the statutory redundancy, back pay and holiday pay via the Insolvency Payment Scheme. Government can try to claw back some of it as a creditor, but they have to join the queue.

No, Tweet above was in reply to this which led to boycotts of the Body Shop by their main customers, women.

I don't know the ins and outs of it, but this seems like a calculated move on behalf of the new owners. There's no way they bought the chain 3 weeks ago and only discover now that it's not a viable business. They would have had to do a ton of due diligence that would have revealed exactly the situation the company was in.

Maybe they write it off...

Tempting, but theft convictions will put a stop to future employment prospects.

The main reason for the success of that boycott is that it's easy to move from one cheap crappy beer to another. A quick Google indicates they were getting on pretty atrociously back in 2017. In effect they simply failed to innovate and to compete in the market which has drastically grown.

"Vulture funds" always makes me giggle. You mean investors/pension funds etc? Let's give them their real titles instead of the emotional bs ones losers give them.

They make investments to back a business, they take the risk. They make money if they get it right and if the business doesn't perform they lose a lot of money.

It's beautiful.😍

You still haven’t explained how there is any profit made from what happened.

I don't think it's a lack of empathy. It's more that you lay blame with the wrong people. You seem to ignore that the demise of Body Shop is down to those running Body Shop. You also ignore that the 'vulture fund' has lost considerable value.

It's absolutely lack of empathy when there's no concern at all for the workers.

Do you remember what happened with Clearys?

Natrium bought it on Friday June 12th 2015. Hours later, they were applying to the High Court to liquidate it.

Were Natrium so stupid that they bought an unviable business and didn’t realise until after they had done so, and suddenly had to close it down and lose all their money?

Of course not.

Gordon Brothers, who sold it, held Clearys under a company called OCS Investment Holdings, which in turn had two parts: OCS Operations Ltd, which ran the department store, and OCS Properties Ltd, which owned the building. OCS Operations leased the store from OCS Properties (even though both were owned by the same company).

Natrium bought OCS Investment Holdings for an undisclosed sum, then immediately split OCS Operations off as an independent company and liquidated it. They kept OCS Properties, which not only owned the building, but was a creditor of OCS Operations.

So not only do they end up owning a very valuable building, and not only do they divest themselves of the expenses and debts of the Clearys business, but they get to write off debts against tax that a few minutes ago they owed to themselves. The workers lose their jobs, the suppliers lose their customer, the taxpayer pays the unpaid wages and redundancy, and Natrium walks away with an iconic building in a prime location and a tax write off.

I don’t know the details of the Body Shop sale, but you can be 100% guaranteed that Aurelius knew exactly what they were doing when they bought it 3 weeks ago, and exactly what they were doing when they liquidated it on Friday.

Aurelius have done this before many times - it’s what they specialise in. One example is the electronics brand Blaupunkt. They bought them in 2009, split off the intellectual property to a new company and licensed it out, merged the (loss making) rest with another company called KWest and let that collapse. Chances are, we’ll see the Body Shop “brand” resurrected and licensed out after all the debts and pesky employees have been walked away from.

Make no mistake, there’s a profit being made here.

It's got feck all to do with lefties. They actively avoided paying workers for multiple weeks of work. That's pretty scummy and nobody is saying they're owed a job. But they did the work so shouldn't be left in the lurch over work they've done.

Yes not fair on staff to be dropped without much notice and without pay, as far as we can see, but the body shop had run its course in this country as far as I could see.

There are plenty of companies providing similar products with a.better range/price and the sustainable vegan etc ethos that has become so much more important today especially to the young who are the purchasers.

I remember admiring Anita Roddicks belief to open a business with strong beliefs behind it but business has to be profitable.

It's not really, plenty of people on lower salaries are living week to week. So working multiple weeks and not getting paid for it isn't easy for plenty of people.

Are you familiar with how capitalism works in the modern world?

Seems to be an increasingly common way of doing business, buy out a business and fire everyone then proceed to flog the brand with cheap crap.