It was early afternoon in Sydney (still morning in Perth) when Appliance Retailer started receiving calls by anxious suppliers who were hitting Google to see if they could confirm and make sense of the speculation. Our first call was to The Good Guys head office to seek confirmation and our second was to Simon King, our man in the UK to see if he could contact Dixons to also confirm.
TGG responded promptly and advised that they were aware of the claim that had been made on radio and the ensuing ‘speculation’. As it is TGG policy not to comment on speculation, they had nothing to add, except an ‘off the record’ comment that I am not permitted to publish.
The reason why our team took the ‘speculation’ seriously enough to investigate, is that the Muir family’s interest in selling their business has been well known within not only the appliance industry, but the Australian financial community. Several years ago, discussions were reportedly held between TGG and the US retail giant Best Buys that didn’t bear fruit. Meanwhile, Australian analysts have valued The Good Guys at close to A$600 million, although it is believed the Muir family will not sell for less than A$1 billion.
However, as Simon King has not yet unearthed any further information from London (Dixons isn’t returning phone calls) this story has been placed on the backburner, as we say.
However, it does leave one question unanswered: Who was the WA radio caller and why did they make such a claim?