HMV’s liquidation sale now unlikely as creditors opt to sell 100,000 records and DVDs by tender. The culprit? Hong Kong’s sky-high rents
- Creditors decide to sell to the highest bidder instead of holding a liquidation sale because the cost of renting a venue would eat into the profits
- Tender to be held in June to find a single buyer to take the whole stockpile of 100,000 CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, after HMV closed shop in Hong Kong
HMV’s much anticipated liquidation sale is unlikely to happen now after the troubled retailer’s creditors on Friday decided to opt for a tender sale to clear out roughly 100,000 CDs, DVD, Blu-Ray discs and other remaining stock.
They blamed Hong Kong’s famously high rents for the decision to call off what would have been the city’s largest liquidation sale in a decade. The plan now is to sell off the whole collection in one go to the highest bidder.
“The creditors worried that a liquidation sale might not be a good idea as the cost to rent a venue to conduct the sale may be very expensive,” said Wong Sun-keung, a partner at accounting firm Vision AS, who is handling the liquidation of HMV.
Wong had been negotiating with a landlord in Causeway Bay for a potential venue.
Hong Kong is known as the world’s most expensive city to rent property. Causeway Bay has overtaken New York’s Fifth Avenue to become the world’s most expensive retail space at US$2,671 per square foot per year, according to the annual Cushman & Wakefield survey of high-street retail rents.
