Saved!...

HMV has been rescued by the restructuring expert Hilco, saving more than 2,500 high street jobs and 141 stores.

Hilco, which already owns HMV Canada, said the deal for the CD and DVD retailer included 25 stores that had been slated for closure, although 80 sites will remain shuttered. All nine branches of its Fopp music chain will also be saved.

HMV, founded in 1921 and famous for its Nipper the dog trademark, collapsed into administration in January after struggling to compete against cut-price supermarket offers and internet downloads. It is understood the chain was sold for £50m, but Hilco and HMV's administrators Deloitte declined to comment on the sale price.

Paul McGowan, the chief executive of Hilco, said: "We hope to replicate some of the success we have had in the Canadian market with the HMV Canada business which we acquired almost two years ago and which is now trading strongly. The structural differences in the markets and the higher level of competition in the UK will prove additional challenges for the UK business but we believe it has a successful future ahead of it."

HMV UK will be run by a Hilco team working alongside existing management. It will be led by Ian Topping, formerly chief executive of the South African retail group Steinhoff. McGowan will become HMV's chairman.

Topping said it was an "exciting investment" and believes the nation's outpouring of grief when HMV collapsed "shows a strong desire for the business to continue to trade and we hope to play a constructive part in delivering that".

Topping plans to take HMV back to its traditional musical roots by reversing an earlier decision to sell tablets in store in order to "reclaim the space for an enhanced music and visual range".

HMV called in administrators from Deloitte in January but hopes of a rescue deal were raised just days later when Hilco bought HMV's £176m of debt for a reported £40m. It was announced in February that 66 of HMV's 220 shops would close over two months, at the cost of nearly 1,000 jobs. Another 37 store closures were announced later that month.

At its peak, HMV had more than 400 shops around the world, more than half of them in the UK. It had a 35% share of Britain's CD market in 2012.

These HMV stores in the UK will therefore remain open (including the flagship at Oxford). HURRAH!


1. Aberdeen

2. Ayr

3. Banbury

4. Bangor (Wales)

5. Basingstoke

6. Basildon

7. Bath

8. Belfast Donegall Arcade

9. Birmingham Bullring

10. Blackpool

11. Bluewater

12. Bournemouth

13. Bradford

14. Brighton

15. Bristol Broadmead

16. Bristol Cribbs Causeway

17. Bromley

18. Bury

19. Bury St Edmunds

20. Cambridge

21. Canary Wharf

22. Canterbury

23. Cardiff

24. Carlisle

25. Chelmsford

26. Cheltenham

27. Chester

28. Chichester

29. Colchester

30. Coventry

31. Crawley

32. Cwmbran

33. Darlington

34. Derby

35. Doncaster

36. Dudley Merry Hill Centre

37. Dundee

38. Eastbourne

39. East Kilbride

40. Edinburgh Fort

41. Edinburgh Ocean Terminal

42. Edinburgh Princes Street

43. Exeter

44. Gateshead

45. Glasgow Argyle Street

46. Glasgow Buchanan Street

47. Glasgow Fort

48. Gloucester

49. Grimsby

50. Guernsey (St.Peter Port)

51. Guildford

52. Hanley (Stoke-on-Trent)

53. Harlow

54. Harrogate

55. Hastings

56. Hatfield

57. Hereford

58. High Wycombe

59. Horsham

60. Hull

61. Inverness

62. Ipswich

63. Islington

64. Isle of Man (Douglas)

65. Isle of Wight (Newport)

66. Jersey (St.Helier)

67. Kettering

68. King's Lynn

69. Kingston-Upon-Thames

70. Leamington Spa

71. Leeds Headrow

72. Leeds White Rose

73. Leicester

74. Lincoln

75. Liverpool LiverpoolOne

76. Livingston

77. Llandudno

78. Maidstone

79. Manchester 90 Market Street

80. Manchester Trafford Centre

81. Mansfield

82. Middlesbrough

83. Milton Keynes

84. Newcastle

85. Newport (Wales)

86. Northampton

87. Norwich Chapelfield

88. Norwich Gentlemen's Walk

89. Nottingham Victoria Centre

90. Nuneaton

91. Oxford

92. Oxford Circus 150 Oxford Street, London W1

93. Peterborough

94. Poole

95. Portsmouth Commercial Road

96. Portsmouth Gun Wharf

97. Preston

98. Plymouth

99. Reading Oracle Centre

100. Romford

101. Selfridges Oxford Street, London W1

102. Sheffield High Street

103. Sheffield Meadowhall

104. Shrewsbury

105. Solihull

106. Southampton

107. Southend

108. Southport

109. Speke Park (Liverpool)

110. Staines

111. Stevenage

112. Stirling

113. Stockport

114. Stratford-Upon-Avon

115. Sunderland

116. Sutton

117. Swansea

118. Taunton

119. Thanet

120. Thurrock

121. Truro

122. Tunbridge Wells

123. Uxbridge

124. Westfield London Stratford City

125. Westfield London W12

126. Wimbledon (hmvcurzon)

127. Winchester

128. Wolverhampton

129. Worcester

130. Worthing

131. Yeovil

132. York

Fopp Stores

1. Bristol

2. Cambridge

3. Edinburgh

4. Glasgow, Byres Road

5. Glasgow, Union Street

6. London - Covent Garden

7. London - Gower Street

8. Manchester

9. Nottingham

The Last Giant...

Music and film retailer HMV last night called in the administrators as it becomes the highest profile chain to collapse during the current economic malaise.

Around 4,500 jobs are at risk at the 90-year-old retailer after its board called in Deloitte as administrators following poor results over the crucial Christmas trading period – when it traditionally makes most of its sales.

Best known for its Nipper the dog trademark, HMV has failed to find a way through difficult economic conditions and fierce competition from supermarkets.

It has been struggling with debts for just over two years, and while banks have revised the terms of their loans it was thought to been handed a lifeline after its suppliers, including Universal Music, EMI, Warner Brothers and Disney, were handed shares in exchange for improved commercial terms.

But those firms were said last night to have refused to agree to provide additional financing to the retailer, leaving it with few options to find the extra resources needed to keep trading. HMV's website was still advertising its 25% off sale for thousands of products on Monday.

The chain, which opened its first store in 1921 on London's Oxford Street and still owns the world's biggest record shop there, had been attempting to shift out of films and music and into accessories such as headphones. But it had not been enough to counter the decline in conventional sales. Simon Fox, then chief executive, jumped ship to Trinity Mirror last year to be replaced by Trevor Moore, the former boss of Jessops, the camera retailer which itself collapsed last week.

Jessops closed its 187 shops for the last time on Friday and made 1,370 staff redundant. It is one of several high street names to go to the wall over the past year, including the electrical retailer Comet, clothing chain Peacocks and JJB sports.

HMV is arguably the highest profile name to collapse during the prolonged economic downturn and altering shopping habits that also forced Woolworths out of business five years ago, at the start of the banking crisis.

Ironically the collapse of Woolworths had initially helped HMV, which enjoyed a peak in sales shortly afterwards, before the competition escalated from supermarkets and online retailers.

A weak economy in the run-up to Christmas has exacerbated the woes of retailers struggling with business models overwhelmed by technological changes such as the explosion in camera phones, which destabilised Jessops, and the explosion in internet downloading which undermined demand for CDs and DVDs at HMV. With consumers less keen to spend over the key festive period, which is a make-or-break time for struggling retailers, Jessops and HMV have been unable to prove to their financiers that they have a viable business model.

Last month in the midst of the Christmas trading period HMV had warned that the tough trading conditions meant it was already struggling despite having installed a new management team in Moore and new finance director Ian Kenyon.

It remains to seen what the impact will be on the film companies and record labels which rely on its 247 stores for their sales. Despite its troubled position, the retailer still sells 27% of all DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and 38% of the physical music market.

I was so sad to hear the news last night! HMV has always been the most important high street store in London for me (no surprises there!) and I really hope that the chain wont close (or at the very least that they will manage to keep open the flagship store on Oxford!).

It used to be so much fun to shop in London - HMV, Virgin, Tower and all the second hand shops in Soho seemed to be filled with treasures and it would take days to go through them all. Now, if HMV falls (and takes Fopp with it), there is nothing left for music lovers in one of the biggest cities in the world, except for a few second hand stores, unless you fancy trips to supermarkets!

HMV currently sells 38% of the physical music sold in the UK - and the last time I checked, a big part of the population still wants albums on physical formats. Vinyl has been making a big comeback as well over the last few years and I flat out refuse to believe that people will want to turn their backs completely on actually OWNING something besides a bloody computer file. The quality of an MP3 is never going to be the same, so people are buying much inferior product (and if they want an album on MP3 they can just buy the CD and rip it to MP3).

I have never, and hopefully will never buy an MP3! I don't really know how much cheaper it is to buy an MP3 album vs physical and I don't care. But I do know that I would stop buying music if the physicals went out. For example, I have supported Madonna for more then 25 years, buying every release that I could get my hands on. Her latest single was not released on any physical format, and therefore I did not buy it (and neither did anyone else, apparently).

I don't think anything can take away the feeling of browsing in a record store. The problem with HMV is that the prices were often way too high, so people would browse in the store and then go home and order the same thing on Amazon for a much lower price. I do the exact same thing over here - I never buy anything in the pathetic excuse of an overpriced record store we here, I just browse and order from Amazon. (BTW, over here well over 90% of music sales are on physical formats. Sadly it is mostly Icelandic music, since people seem to want to buy that crap and just steal everything else!).

HMV has been standing for 90 years and I refuse to believe that this is the end. They do need to make some massive changes and probably close down a lot of stores, but if they could offer more competitive prices I think they could continue to stay in business. At least I hope so!