JCPenney, the American bankrupt fashion retailer, finally won approval from the court on Monday (9 November) to sell its store operations to Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management.
The court approval means the much talked about deal is now into its final stages. However, the retailer believes the transaction to end only late this month.
JCPenney’s attorneys have said that constant delay in the deal over the last several months has massively damaged the retailer’s business with many suppliers having taken back their shipments owing to the uncertainty over the deal.
Once the deal gets finalised, JCPenney will be able to keep over 600 of its stores open – that would be saving nearly 60,000 jobs.
But it will not be easy for JCPenney as its stores haven’t been performing well even before pandemic started and now with fresh lockdown in many countries, there will be fresh challenges for the ailing retailer.
Also, the sales of the retailer have been falling every year since 2015, with sales in September 2020 slumping more than 20 per cent from August 2020.
Notably, Simon and Brookfield were the only parties that showed willingness to put up significant capital for JCPenney – more than even Sycamore Partners.
And thus JCPenney gets saved from being wiped out completely!
