Giant Bookstore Chain Goes Broke, To Get Mopped Up By Even More Giant Bookstore Chain

(((I'm trying to think of some angle from which the collapse of the monstrous BORDERS chain can be interpreted as good news for people who write, read or sell books. Wait a minute –
"books"? Those were something like vinyl records, right?)))

(((Traditionally, in recessions and depressions, people used to read a lot of books. 'Cause they were unemployed and books were, you know, cheap – something you could do alone in a room, in a prison cell, even. Now books AREN'T cheap. Looks like this may be the first recession and depression where the gloomily unemployed spend a lot of their time websurfing.)))

Link: Credit crisis forces Borders into sale talks - Times Online .

The credit crisis engulfing America’s banking system yesterday threatened the independence of Borders, the retailer of books and DVDs, which put itself up for sale and admitted that it had been forced to seek emergency funding.

Borders, which yesterday reported annual sales of $3.8 billion (£1.9 billion) for 2007, said that it had appointed JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, the Wall Street investment banks, to “explore strategic alternatives”, including a sale of the entire company or a break-up.

George Jones, chief executive, said that he had been trying to secure new funding but that “the current credit environment had made many of these alternatives prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable”.

Mr Jones said that Borders would have experienced liquidity problems in the next few months had it not managed to secure an emergency cash loan of $42.5 million from its largest investor – the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. He also said that he had scrapped the group’s dividend to try to conserve capital.

Shares in Borders last night closed down 28 per cent at $5.07, a record low.

Mr Jones admitted to shareholders that “the company can give no assurances that a transaction of any kind will occur”.

Barnes & Noble, America’s biggest book chain, said that it would consider making a bid if approached about a possible deal by the advisers to Borders. It added that it had not yet been approached by bankers from either JPMorgan Chase or Merrill Lynch.

Borders was yesterday valued in the stock market at just over $300 million, about 8 per cent of its total annual sales....