Stage Stores emerges from bankruptcy
Home / FindArticles / Business / Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City) / Aug 28, 2001HOUSTON (NYT) -- Fourteen months after financial woes forced Stage Stores to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Houston-based retailer has completed its financial reorganization and emerged from bankruptcy protection.
Stage President Jim Scarborough said the bitter medicine of bankruptcy has made the company stronger and poised for prosperity.
"We've gone from a train wreck a year ago to one of the most profitable retailers in the country," Scarborough said after the company announced its escape from Chapter 11. Stage reports that its same-store sales are up 19 percent so far this year. In the current economic environment, most retailers are happy to grab same-store gains of a few percentage points.
"This is a healthy, viable company once again," Scarborough said.
Escaping money trouble forced Stage to axe 249 underperforming stores. It has gone from 591 locations down to 342 stores operating under the Stage, Bealls and Palais Royal names.
The majority of the company is now owned by creditors who were owed millions by Stage, which had debts of $600 million when it filed under Chapter 11. Those creditors now own 85 percent of Stage's newly issued stock, with the repayment estimated to be worth about 48 cents for every dollar the creditors were owed. The remaining 15 percent of the new stock has been reserved for stock-option grants to the company's management. The holdings of former shareholders were wiped out by the bankruptcy.
Many of Stage's financial problems can be traced to a buyout binge and an inability to digest its many acquisitions, including the 240- store, Oklahoma City-based C.R. Anthony chain that Stage bought in 1997.
In the early going, Stage's rapid growth made it the darling of Wall Street. At its zenith, Stage had just over 700 stores, and its stock price boomed to record levels.
But the spree outstripped Stage's ability to manage the stores.
So Mitt Romney's BAIN CAPITAL captured Stage Stores, forced them to buy 240 stores to look good on paper, pumped the stock up to record levels, pulled out their management fees and sent Stage Stores into bankruptcy. When Stage Stores used bankruptcy to shuck 52 cents on every dollar it owed, and dumped the 249 stores it never needed in the first place, it came out of bankruptcy while it's stockholders went into personal bankruptcy for believing the pump-and-dump stock scheme.
by Sharon Edelson 
A b-t-s forecast survey by PriceGrabber, a part of Experian, found that 69 percent of consumers plan to shop online and use comparison shopping sites as a money-saving technique, compared with 23 percent in 2010. Forty-one percent of shoppers said they’ll visit retailer Web sites this b-t-s period to print out coupons, versus 33 percent last year.
PriceGrabber’s survey found that 48 percent of consumers plan to spend $250 or more on b-t-s purchases, and 25 percent will spend $500 or more, a modest decrease from b-t-s budgets in 2010, when 56 percent of consumers said they’d spend $250 or more and 31 percent planned to spend $500 or more. The survey of 2,612 U.S. online consumers was conducted May 12 to 19.
“We have a clear sign that ‘trendy and fashionable’ or ‘influenced by friends’ is shrinking and ‘value’ is gaining momentum,” said Marshal Cohen, NPD’s chief industry analyst. “The study’s results clearly point out that consumers will be shopping later, looking for value, and searching out lower priced options.”
“B-t-s is the second biggest season” next to Christmas, in terms of sales, said Mark Snyder, chief marketing officer at Kmart. “Our customer is compressing the frequency of her trips and saying she’s being more thoughtful and deliberate in what she’s choosing.” 
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by Barbara Barker 
Outside Inditex’s corporate inner sanctum, little is known about Ortega except that he’s the richest man in Spain — and the seventh richest (up two notches over last year) in the world, with a net worth of $31 billion, Forbes reported in March. His fortune includes Inditex stock — he has maintained a 59.3 percent stake in the company since it went public in 2001 — and luxury real estate projects in the U.S., Florida in particular, and in such major European cities as London, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin, Madrid and Barcelona. He has additional investments in banks, gas and tourism and owns a horse-jumping circuit and a soccer league.
