As to price promises, I have often wondered whether their goods are not often slightly different from those of smaller high street retailers, be it even a revised model number. Shaky evidence, maybe, but it does seem not easy to find identical model numbers elsewhere.
I'm sure you're right.. you're certainly not the first to make that charge..
Comet of old is long gone. Today, it's a ruthless, mean-spirited washed-out operation, run on a shoestring budget by shadowy private equity bankers.
Those bankers operate in complete secrecy, disguising their activities and their clients' identities, behind numerous layers of obfuscation. It's impossible to discover who ultimately owns Comet. Once upon a time, you would simply consult the public shareholder register to discover the ownership of a company. Not so with "private equity finance".
The private-equity buy-out of Comet could well be a wrecking exercise. A controlled ruination to eradicate it as a major electrical retailer. Comet's demise would greatly advantage the remaining electrical retailers, in particular DSG. (Dixons/Currys/PCWorld).
Maybe we should draw a parallel with FW Woolworths plc, which collapsed spectacularly in January 2009, resulting in 27,000 job losses.
Many see the demise of FW Woolworths plc as a deliberate wrecking operation. A conspiracy to destroy the company since it was unwanted competition for other businesses. In the months leading up to the collapse of Woolworths, its board took out massive loans (circa £500m) from GMAC, a shadowy cut-out of the equally dubious US private equity firm, Cerberus.
In Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades or Hell. Appropriate in the circumstances. The terms of the GMAC/Cerberus loan were onerous and Woolworths' fate was essentially sealed the moment those loans were agreed by the board.
The GMAC/Cerberus apparatus was used in similar wrecking operations against a number of British building societies. Overnight, the mutual sector lost half a dozen of its key institutions to the same wreckers from Cerberus.
The boards of some of Britain's favourite mutuals were sinking their savers' capital into American CDOs (collateralised debt obligations) sold by GMAC/Cerberus. No surprise that those CDOs turned out to be sour assets, known in the trade as "liar loans". Many of those loans that had been packaged up as CDOs were unsecured Yankee car loans. The packaging of the CDOs was done so as to disguise the true default rate of the loans. Default rates of 85% were the norm. The CDOs were liabilities, not assets. The building societies frittered away their savers' fortunes by buying dodgy Yankee car loans!
The building societies which invested in those CDOs were essentially stitched up by GMAC/Cerberus. I would argue that the board members of those doomed building societies were wittingly involved in the wrecking operations. These directors were Boardroom Quislings. Quite a few ennobled "Lords" and "Ladies" were amongst them. The ultimate winners in this wrecking operation against the UK mutuals were the larger banks. The destruction of the mutual sector served only to consolidate the Big Banks' grip on the UK retail banking sector.
As for Comet.. we learn that its French owner, Kesa, sold the company in November 2011 for just £2, with a £50m bung to keep the pension fund from collapsing. The new buyers were the private equity bankers
Opcapita LLP. Opcapita are a highly secretive outfit who operate Hailey Holdings and Hailey Acquisitions, two private investment firms.
There's almost no public information about Opcapita. According to the Daily Telegraph (9 Nov 2011), a Mr Henry Jackson, former banker at Deutsche Bank runs OpCapita, and is backed by John von Spreckelsen, the former executive chairman of Somerfield.
Whose capital are they using though? We're not told.. They are very private bankers.
"The OpCapita boss's first private equity purchase was MFI, the troubled furniture store famed for its Boxing Day sales. He picked up the chain for £1 in 2006, taking on 200 stores and £51.9m of customer deposits.
"Jackson founded OpCapita's predecessor, Merchant Equity Partners, in February 2006 at the height of the credit boom with the backing of Goldman Sachs, Hilco and US hedge fund
Cerberus. ...
The deathly hand of Cerberus is there once again... Alarm bells should be ringing for anyone connected to Comet..
EDIT:... Another Cerberus casualty was Focus, once the second largest DIY chain in the UK. Focus was also bought by Cerberus, for just a £1. Two years later and the chain had collapsed into administration. The largest beneficiary of Focus's demise was rival B&Q plc.. Did Cerberus deliberately wreck Focus?
