Australian retail chain Harvey Norman chief warns of tough times
27 Nov 2012
Australian retail chain, Harvey Norman's executive chairman Gerry Harvey has warned that industry conditions remained dire and more retailers would be expected to go bust early next year.
''There are more retailers currently under pressure than I've ever seen, I've been in retail 50 years,'' he told reporters after the company's shareholder meeting today.
''There's a lot of businesses that are hanging on for Christmas, and expecting Christmas sales to be good but they know, or have this gut feeling, that the first half of next year is going to be extremely difficult.''
He warned that despite the wave of failures over the last two years there was a lot more to come because he had companies coming to see him and asking whether he would take them over or buy a stake.
He earlier told investors that the company's massive real estate portfolio worth billions of dollars ensured it would be the last one standing when the retail clean-out came to an end.
''We're in a very difficult environment and we're playing 'last man standing','' he said. ''We're doing all things possible to be there when another 20 per cent of the stores close in the area that we're in, then we're going to get the advantage of those stores going out of business.
