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Lew, one of Australia’s leading retailers, is reported to be in the running to rescue the Robins Kitchen chain, which has recently gone into administration.
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Solomon Lew / Getty
Solomon Lew through one of his associate companies Playcorp is reported to be amongst the likely candidates to take Australian retail kitchenware group Robins Kitchen out of administration.
The retail chain, specializing in quality kitchenware, kitchen equipment, pots and pans, crockery and cutlery in Sydney called in the administrators on December 16th and their first creditors meeting was held a week later. At the meeting speculation was fairly strong among trade creditors that Lew’s Playcorp would be amongst the most likely companies who could be interested in picking up a distressed asset at a potentially bargain price.
Robins Kitchen range of products are fairly compatible with the products that Playcorp have been marketing.
The next phase in the procedure will be a second creditors meeting where a vote will be taken to decide on the future of the 55-store 300 employee retail chain. Among the possible options, a direct sale of the company as a going concern would be the most acceptable to creditors, with other options being that the company would continue to trade under a deed of arrangement or, the least acceptable of all, that the company, with 36 Robins Kitchen outlets in Queensland, 18 in New South Wales and one in the Australian capital territories go into liquidation.
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A spokesperson for the liquidators, FTI Consulting, announced their intention to work with all parties in an effort to minimize the impact of the administration and possible liquidation on creditors, which includes members of the public, as well as on staff, as much as possible possible.”
At this stage FTI party going to reveal details of the company’s assets and unsecured debts apart from the fact that the National Australia Bank is the sole secured creditor holding a charge over the company, while the Australian Taxation Office is also owed certain sum of money which remains unspecified.
The management team at Playcorp will obviously be keeping a close eye on the situation at Robins Kitchen
Solomon Lew has been a leading figure on the Australian retailing scene since the mid-1960s. When aged just eighteen, he was handed the reins of his father’s modest retailing business with a mixture of bravado and steamrollering efficiency pioneered it into being one of the largest and certainly most dynamic retailing enterprises in the entire vast continent.
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