Following speculation that money raised from the sale of six B&Q stores would be used to fund Kingfisher’s transformation plan, the global home improvement giant has said this is not the case.
A report in the Sunday Times suggested that Kingfisher CEO Veronique Laury was hoping to raise £125million via the sale and leaseback of six B&Q stores in order to help fund Kingfisher's five-year turnaround plan, One Kingfisher. Subsequent news outlets have picked up on the story and continued the rumours.
However, while Kingfisher has today confirmed the sale leaseback process, it insists it is not linked to the transformation plan, with a spokesperson adding that the company has “net cash on the balance sheet, profits of more than £700million a year, and no pension fund deficit”.
The stores in question are Birmingham, Croydon, Southampton, Cardiff and two in the north east of England.
Last year we were told tool time tool sales promotion at Xmas was worth. Millions to the company. This year they haven't bothered, sales are well down with no xmas promotional activities, mass out of stocks, staff have left in droves replaced by lovely but inexperienced Eastern European workers, staff bonuses taken away and replaced with bonus based on unachievable targets have cost staff 6% of their salary, while the CEO and directors have received bigger than normal bonuses. Lowery has destroyed BQ UK, and is continuing to do so how long before kingfisher dumps BQ like it did woolworths, remember before they sold woolworths they sold off the property that it owned!
I wonder how long the vision of the VL will continue to pull the group to the very bottom? How many days will it go before someone thinks that this is the last moment to change the direction of development ... To stop this madness, to regain value of shares and investor confidence ... The group is bad, and it will be even worse. The single product market is not working (China does not manage to produce everything on time), people in each group's countries are different and have different feelings of aesthetics and other needs, and no 10,000 projects will change ... Similar selling prices are also a nail to the coffin, check the price of tools, for example MacAllister in England and some EU country, and refer to the average level of earnings. This is some massacre. And the SAP system will catch us all.
Members of the recently formed Landlords Alliance have started a Nationwide boycott of B&Q and Screwfix due to the former's support of Shelter. The 'charity' leads or supports every attack that is happening on the Private Rented Sector. These attacks are causing the sector to contract at over 4000 properties a month and are therefore resulting in massive numbers of families losing their homes. These households are then left looking for somewhere new to rent in a shrinking market and often end up at their council's doors but with little in the way of social housing stock, the result is homelessness.