Jeff Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson of Wellesley, MA bought the Harvard Book Store from Frank Kramer, owner for 46 years. Kramer says in the announcement, “Jeff is both a book lover and a businessman who has a tangible affection for Harvard Book Store. When I met him, I liked him immediately. And when I found out that he and his family plan their vacations around the locations of great independent bookstores, I liked him even more.” Carole Horne remains as general manager of the store. Jeff Mayersohn has been an executive at Sonus Networks, a an IP communications infrastructure company. […]
Bookstores
Borders: No Sale, Just Warrants
Borders does not have a deal to sell the company so, under their loan agreement from earlier this year, they have issued warrants to Pershing Square Capital Management to purchase 5.15 million shares of the company’s stock at seven dollars a share. The warrants can be exercised up until October 9, 2014.
The End for Olsson's
Olsson’s Books and Records closed all five of their remaining stores yesterday and petitioned the bankruptcy to turn their Chapter 11 filing back into a Chapter 7 liquidation. In a posting on their web site, the company cites “stagnant sales, low cash reserves, and an inability to renegotiate current leases, along with a continuing weak retail economy and plummeting music sales.” General manager Stephen Wallace-Haines says: “In the end, all the roads towards reorganization led to this dead end: we did not have the money required to pay for product in advance, to collect reserves to buy for Christmas, and […]
Ex Cody's Employees File Contract Complaint
Two longtime employees of Cody’s Books have filed a complaint with California’s Labor Commission “alleging that the bookstore violated its contract with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by not paying its workers paid time off when the store closed down in June,” the Berkeley Daily Planet reports. Cody’s liquidated its assets in August to pay off their bank lien, though they never filed for bankruptcy. The union rep for Cody’s employees Sharon Sherburn-Zimmer says, “If they went bankrupt they would have to pay off secured creditors first. But since they didn’t go bankrupt they have a contractual obligation with […]
Borders Warrants Come Due
The WSJ reminds readers that the next phase of Borders’ loan-shark deal with Pershing Square Capital Management kicks in October 1. If the bookseller does not have a deal to sell the company–which is increasingly unlikely given the state of capital markets–then Pershing Square acquires warrants to buy another 5.15 million shares (or almost 8 percent of the company). For now those warrants are nearly worthless, since they are exercised at $7 a share, which is about the highest Borders stock has traded ever since their disclosure of liquidity pressures earlier this year. Pershing Square is already the company’s biggest […]
S&P Cuts BN Rating
With shares in the bookseller up considerably from their pathetic level earlier this summer, Standard & Poor’s lowered their recommendation on Barnes & Noble’s stock to “sell” on “continued challenges in the bookselling market.” The report says, ““while we applaud (Barnes & Noble) for managing costs effectively in a challenging environment, we remain concerned about further gross margin erosion, driven by competitive pressures from online peers.”Forbes