Morgan to shut shop with 600 job losses |
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Published
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Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:10
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LONDON - British fashion chain Morgan has announced that it has called in the administrators and this move will mean a loss of 600 jobs. Morgan's administrators KPMG revealed that the group had been affected by the tough trading conditions.
Like-for-like sales plummeted by 19.1 percent in the first half of the year. The situation had caused French parent company Morgan SA to back out of a distribution agreement in Britain. Morgan's 19 stores and 47 department store concessions will be shut down from today and staff has been informed that they would not receive any pay starting today. Morgan's collapse comes at a time when analysts were hoping that the prevailing warm weather would rescue many ailing fashion chains.
But the main creditor of Morgan Retail (UK), the Bank of Scotland decided to call in the loans and Morgan was left with no choice but to call its administrators. "Morgan has suffered from difficult trading conditions on the high street. Trading for the first six months of the financial year to June has been poor with like-for-like sales down 19.1pc to £11.8m," said David Crawshaw of KPMG. "We have received expressions of interest. However, without a distribution agreement and stock, it will not be possible to continue to trade the business."
Morgan was also hit by the revival of Marks & Spencer with its Per Una range as far as sales were concerned. But the dismal performance has surprised analysts, "That's a very poor performance. I thought Morgan was doing OK," said Richard Ratner, at Seymour Pierce.
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