The judge has once again given Big Bazar no more time to make agreements with creditors. For the third time, the court in Leeuwarden has refused to appoint a debt expert who could have found a way out of the bargain chain’s financial problems.
Big Bazar’s lawyer assumes that bankruptcy will be declared on Tuesday. In Drenthe, Big Bazar has stores in Emmen, Assen, Meppel, Hoogeveen, Coevorden, Nieuw-Amsterdam and Klazienaveen. The branch in Assen is already closed pending bankruptcy. The store in Hoogeveen also kept its doors closed.
The chain promised to have received millions of euros in financing during the court hearing last week. That money should have convinced the judge to temporarily pause bankruptcy applications made by creditors and appoint a restructuring expert. But the judge is not confident that the chain can still be saved.
“Despite a possible capital injection, the judgment is that Big Bazar has insufficient resources to meet its current obligations during a cooling-off period to be announced,” the judge said.
Big Bazar reported that it was in financial difficulties this summer, partly due to the significant price increases in the shopping street, which caused customers to spend less. To the annoyance of landlords of retail properties and suppliers, many bills have not been paid recently. Many shops have also already closed. Of the more than 120 branches, fewer than a hundred remain and the debts run into tens of millions of euros. To enforce payment of invoices, several creditors filed a bankruptcy petition for Big Bazar.
Now that this latest rescue attempt has also failed, the bankruptcy applications for the chain will be processed again on Tuesday. Van Oorschot thinks that bankruptcy will immediately follow.
The chain has already been in a similar situation twice and both times a new request was submitted to appoint a debt expert just before the deadline. As a result, bankruptcy applications were repeatedly put on hold.
Now such a new rescue operation is no longer an obvious choice, according to Van Oorschot. “Every action by Big Bazar is a stay of execution. We have fought, but we know where the limit is and it has been reached,” he says. Van Oorschot also says that the approximately 1,300 employees of Big Bazar will be paid on Monday. After that, he believes, the fate of Big Bazar is in the hands of a curator.