Small Cap Value Report (Mon 4 Feb 2019) - Monsoon, AIEA, WEY, TRAK
Good morning, it's Paul here!
Graham has rather foolishly passed the controls to me. As we know, anything can happen!
Looks to me as yet another big name High Street fashion chain is feeling the strain - Monsoon.
Anyone asking for lower rents, and time to pay, is under financial pressure. Retailing is just so brutal at the moment, undergoing massive structural change. There's no alternative to rents coming down very substantially, and over-capacity can only be fixed by considerable numbers of retailers (and restaurants) falling by the wayside.
Peter Simon, the founder of Monsoon, is in my recollection, an arrogant so amp; so. Myself, and a couple of pretty harmless shareholders, turned up at a Monsoon AGM c.2004 in my Aston Martin DB7 - which was a sleek silver thing. We expected to sweep in, without a word. Not a bit of it! Monsoon had arranged for a snarling welcoming committee of registrars, who looked like a bunch of ugly, and very aggressive librarians. Demanding to know your name, and if you appear on the shareholder register, seemingly unaware of the nominee system.
I tried to storm the meeting, which sent them into a frenzy! Peter Simon hid behind them all. David...