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A comment on Dick Smith Is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time. Parent comment

Re:Dick Smith Is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time by sumedh on Tuesday January 05, 2016 @05:19AM (#10842441)
> The extraordinary thing is buying a business with $371m of inventory for $115m.

To be fair the buyer can say that the products are obsolete so the inventory cannot be valued at $371m.

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Re:Dick Smith Is the Greatest Private Equity Heist of All Time by petecox on Tuesday January 05, 2016 @08:46PM (#10847837)
I've bought several things from Dick in the past 12 months, mainly click-and-collect, where they're competitive with other online retailers when specials are posted via ozbargain. Or a wireless mouse that's cheaper than the supermarket aisle.

But the stock in store? they were recently selling HDMI cables for about $12 that had been discounted from $55. Having low turnover stock sit on the shelves that is vastly inflated in price is what got them in this mess.

The real worth of the goods was probably closer to $115m, but treble the valuation based on insane highway-robbery retail markups.

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