Another one bites the dust!

Blacks leisure has become the latest in a long line of companies to fall into administration, putting 3500 jobs at risk in the process. Whilst, the operator of Blacks and Millets had previously hoped that they would have found a buyer before it got to this stage, it is not short of suitors once its assets are put onto the market on Monday.

Blink and you'll miss it!

Favourites to snap up the brand include Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct and Peter Jones, who is best known for his role as a Dragon on Dragons Den (he has recently denied such a deal on Twitter such is the world nowadays). With shares closing at 1.38p, the Blacks leisure group is expected to be valued around £10million which will mainly take into account the 306 stores and assets that Blacks currently owns.

In an attempt to save as many jobs as possible a controversial insolvency operation will be undertaken. This will involve the buyer being able to wipe out any debts the group may have and reject any unprofitable stores. This is hoped to allow the new owners to plough more money into re-establishing the firm on the market and help minimise the number of redundancies.

Blacks joins an ever growing list of companies which have into administration including; La Senza, Hawkins Bazaar and Barratts. I personally think that this growing trend is likely to continue with firms such as Kitchen Company Homeform and the DIY shop Focus likely to face the same fate in the upcoming months. One thing for sure is that 2012 is going to be an even longer and harder struggle for both employees and employers than could have possibly been expected.