HMV stock to be Sold

The liquidator of collapsed music chain HMV has backed away from a retail sale of the company’s inventory. Liquidator Wong Sun-keung, a partner at accounting firm Vision AS, said the administrative costs of launching such a sale – especially the rent – would take too large a chunk out of the takings.

While the inventory of the collapsed chain has a ticket value of HK$9 million, a ‘fire sale’ of stock would realise as little as $1 million – before rent and staff costs were taken into account.

A creditors committee decided at a meeting last week to call tenders for the complete sale of the stock – an estimated 100,000 CDs, DVDs and vinyl records retrieved from stores shut last December and currently stored in shipping containers.

“We will sell all the remaining stocks in one go,” Wong said.

“Only if the tender offers were too low would we consider a liquidation sale. But now we prefer to use a tender to sell the remaining stock, because it’s simpler and we believe we can get a better price,” Wong said.

A liquidation sale of stock became inevitable after two white knight investors walked away last month due to legal issues relating to the continued use of the HMV brand in any new entity.