Breaking news
Raj Chatha's EFB (European Food Brokers) Retail Ltd are rumoured to be in pole position to take over a substantial number of the remaining Oddbins shops with a bid that is substantially bigger than any other bids on the Deloitte table. The deal may have been cut late Thursday night/early Friday morning.
Jim's Loire understands that an announcement will be on Tuesday. However, the EFB bid success has not been confirmed and should be treated as rumour although the source is well placed and has been accurate before. It has not been possible to contact the administrator at Deloitte for confirmation.
Jim's Loire understands that an announcement will be on Tuesday. However, the EFB bid success has not been confirmed and should be treated as rumour although the source is well placed and has been accurate before. It has not been possible to contact the administrator at Deloitte for confirmation.
EFB Retail Ltd was incorporated in 1996. In 2009 they acquired 109 Wine Cellar Stores, when it went into administration. In late 2009 the company mad ean unsuccessful attempt to buy 200 stores from Threshers' administrators – KPMG. The company is based in Walsall in the West Midlands.
I gather staff in Eire have received payslips for April. They have been paid until the 20th of April, although apparently had been told they would be paid up until the 28th.
I gather staff in Eire have received payslips for April. They have been paid until the 20th of April, although apparently had been told they would be paid up until the 28th.
Correction (Sunday 24th April 11.40)
Just had a call from Lee Manning of Deloitte's to tell me that the rumour is incorrect – see next post.
Do the Wine Cellar stores stock just brands, or also wines from independent producers? If the former, do EFB Retail have any experience in buying non-brand wine?
ReplyDelete"11:28"
Is the Wine Cellar brand still being used or have they been turned into EFB Convenience stores?
ReplyDeletethe website has closed down!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe rumour is that Oddbins changed hands at midnight on on Thursday/Friday night, with the successful bidder acquiring a large chunk of the estate. Nobody knows who it is, though. Or which stores they've got. Or whether they'll run it under the Oddbins name.
ReplyDeleteAs ever, the staff haven't been told anything. I'm assuming this is because they don't want to announce closures over the Easter weekend in case staff say 'I'll take this case of Dom Perignon as my redundancy payment, thank you' (and who could blame them?). So their tactic is not to tell anyone anything, even if they're one of the 'safe' stores.
But don't you think we have a right to know who we're working for?
I find the idea that there is more than a single bottle of DP left in the estate laughable ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnon at 22:29 - you mean to say that you're not taking the website's claim that "We’re just doing some routine maintenance" at face value!? Such cynicism.
ReplyDeleteWhen the redundancies happened this week HR / management brushed us off with "information packs are in the post" - the implication being that info on pay for work done etc would be included. This wasn't truthful - it was just the standard form for applying for statutory pay, and a letter pointing out that we might want to toddle off down the jobcentre sooner rather than later.
www.oddbins.com now has a holding page saying "We’re just doing some routine maintenance"
ReplyDeleteoh dear
Staff are the pawns in this whole thing.
ReplyDeleteWe got an email from Lee Manning this afternoon confirming that we are only being paid to the 20th of the month and we should get outstanding monies due as soon as possible.
Lots of branches didnt open today after the news that we were not to be paid in full leaked from our irish branches yesterday. After reading Lee's email, I got so sick, that I had to shut my branch. I doubt many branches will open tomorrow or even thereafter, why should we work and not be paid.
Is this legal not to pay staff?
All I can say is the staff have been shafted by Simon Baile and are now bing shart on by Deloitte, oh what joy to be an oddbins employee.