Who owns maplin

Be Social With eTeknix. Send this to a friend. Send Cancel. About Us Advertise. All rights reserved. All trademarks used are properties of their respective owners. Hosted by InnoScale. The continued, growing popularity of products like Arduino, Raspberry Pi and BBC micro:bit has created a niche where Maplin hopes to re-establish itself as a key player. The site now offers single board computers, microcontrollers, projects and kits, catering to this tinkerer market and supporting the increasing role of electronics in STEM classrooms.

He says for the time being however, the firm will continue to focus on the market between general purpose retailers and electronics distributors. One way the retailer plans to cultivate this liminal market is through informative content. Marshall says the aim is to recreate the experience of being able to go into a shop and have a conversation with an expert about a project or problem, without the need for a physical location.

This is where he hopes to differentiate Maplins from larger, more price-led online retailers. Will the franchise bring back physical shops in the future? Time and again I was able to go into the local shop 10 miles away to buy emergency spare parts ranging from PC power supplies to single resistors, with guitar leads and PMR walkie-talkies somewhere in between.

Ok, a bit more expensive than elsewhere but when you need something now, you need it NOW! I used the mail ordering facility when I was not in a hurry, it saved me 20 miles-worth of petrol… The goods did not take 4 weeks to arrive despite being sourced by companies that claimed to be UK based, as is often the case with some on-line outlets. Maplin's woes was in new management convincing Montagu that they could move from their current business model to be something of an Apple type.

The reality has always been that Maplin succeeded at connecting things together with some innovation products on top. New management ladled in costs on overheads and initiatives that could never work, that plus the financial load eventually caused the issue. I think you misunderstand the nature of shareholder loans a bit here.

They have two main purposes: 1. To reduce the tax bill as you say. In many countries the extent you can do this is restricted but the UK is still pretty generous. As an aside, and somewhat surprisingly, a restriction on interest deductibility was introduced in the US as part of the Trump reforms 2. To differentiate returns, and specifically to incentivise management.

The balance of ownership of shareholder loans and ordinary equity is varied particularly between management and the institutional owner. The institution gets a preferred, more secure return, the management own more of the ordinary equity and hence benefit more from upside. But these purposes are only really relevant if things go well: if things go badly, it's likely there would be no tax to save anyway, and the ordinary equity will be worthless. It is generally understood by all concerned that in these circumstances the shareholder loans will not be repaid.

Indeed bank lenders and rating agencies if they're involved will ensure that they can't be. So fundamentally they aren't really a 'burden', and the question of whether the rate charged is 'appropriate' or not is a red herring. Look at the Montagu case: when things went wrong they effectively cancelled the debt. They didn't really lose anything by doing so: the debt is only ever worth what the business is worth anyway. Maplin went bust because of the internet, and perhaps some poor management.

Shareholder loans had nothing to do with it. I may have been a bit inconsistent in my discussion of shareholders loans. I disagreed with him about this. I regard Rutland's shareholder loans as equity and the interest rate as the target rate of return on the private equity investment.

I would also say the same of Montagu's shareholder loans. But the Series A notes are not described as shareholder loans in Maplin's accounts. They are simply called "unsecured notes". I therefore assumed they were commercial debt rather than shareholder loans, and questioned the interest rate and the capitalisation of interest on what should have been senior debt according to the description.

However, I may have made an incorrect assumption. In my view the real problem in was the serious deterioration in operating profits, not the rising net debt. And Montagu recapitalised the company in order to dress it up for sale.

I'm sorry if that isn't clear. Thanks for the clarification. Rutland like any private equity investor will have looked at the return on loans and ordinary equity together. The target return would have been higher than the rate on the loans. No doubt, but the interest rate would have been a substantial component of the target RoI.

Likewise with loan notes or mezz in the midco, and equity in the topco. There is no tax advantage as all part of a group. Assuming all the same instruments were in a Bidco the overall tax should net to be the same.

Historically all debts would be in the bidco with an intercreditor but this structure is now prevalent in virtually all LBO's for security enforcement purposes. As per other comments - failed business model was the critical issue. Montague overpaid and didn't keep up with the shift online, taking a massive writedown crystallising a cash loss on the exit to Rutland.

I'm not a private equity expert so genuinely didn't know the reasons for the threeco structure. I completely agree with your diagnosis.

Maplin gives a platform there which would be harder to do off the back of our existing website Laptops Direct. As reported by Retail Gazette , Shoezone chief executive Nick Davis said the company is looking to add the stores "over the next 18 months". Revenues also increased by 1. Our average lease length is 2.

By contrast, Maplin's well-documented collapse could see the electronics firm's last stores closed for good within a matter of months, according to The Express. Citing sources "familiar with the situation", the website reports that administrator PwC will complete the closure of the remaining Maplin outlets by July, following the start of the process back in May.

However, sources have claimed it was "unlikely" that they would gain a substantial return on the sales. The news outlet also reports that of Maplin's head of office employees have been made redundant to date, as PwC continues to find buyers for various elements of the business. Despite no sale arising yet, the administration firm has received around 60 "expressions of interest" from prospective buyers —the most positive and advanced of which have centred on the Maplin brand.

On the lack of solid interest, however, joint administrator Toby Underwood warned that PwC may be forced to begin closing Maplin stores unless a solution is found. PwC, Maplin's administrator, has announced it's made the decision to slash staff at the electronics retailer as it struggles to keep the company afloat.