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Riding the new wave of insolvency: Podcast 4
Jennifer Ball, Partner, Litigation
James Stewart, Ferrier Hodgson
Jennifer Ball
Hello, I'm Jennifer Ball, an insolvency partner at Clayton Utz. Welcome back to our fourth and final podcast about INSOL Shanghai, INSOL's International Regional Conference which will run from 14 to 17 September in Shanghai. I'm joined today by James Stewart who is a partner from Ferrier Hodgson and the head of the group's retail practice. James, we all like a little bit of retail therapy but I think your INSOL session will have a different take on that.
James Stewart
Thanks Jennifer, yes we are hoping that the people who will come to our session on retail will get a lot out of it. We are very fortunate to have some interesting speakers and we'll be covering a wide range of topics, not only including what is happening in the world scene of retail and what the global trends are, but also relating it back to the Australian market for the Australian listeners and what some of the threshold issues in terms of restructuring retail businesses will be.
Jennifer Ball
Well we have obviously seen a significant downturn in the economy. Will you be exploring how this has affected the retail sector in particular?
James Stewart
We are going to talk about a number of threshold issues that will be impacting retailers across the space with a backdrop to the world market. One of the things that we have seen in the last seven years, certainly in the Australian market, is a market whereby retailers' sales have been consistently been going up well above CPI. The thing about a market which is booming is that it has the capacity to hide a lot of mistakes and structural issues inside retail businesses which are not operating in the normal way. When those sales start to decline and they go backwards, what then happens is that some of the retailers who maybe are not operating their ship as tightly as they should be get exposed.
Jennifer Ball
Well what trends globally, James, will you be looking at in the breakout session? I understand you have a co speaker who will also be attending with you.
James Stewart
Yes Steve Kulmar from Retail Oasis is one of Australia's advertising and marketing gurus and he's focused on the retail space over many years. The great thing about Steve's part of the presentation is he's going to talk about world trends, he's going to really set the scene for what is happening in the market, how that is relevant to various segments of the retail space and how we can then bring that back and relate that to the Australian market.
Jennifer Ball
Well that sounds like a fantastic example because people need to take a message home from the session and relate that to what's going on back at their home. I guess there's also the emphasis with the downturn on restructuring - that seems to be the trend at the moment.
James Stewart
Yes. I think that restructuring has been a focus for most practitioners now for almost 10 years I think - and very strongly so - and what we're going to talk about in the session is the specific aspects of retailers and how to look at the restructuring of those entities. It will be relevant to the context of what's happening in the world market so we would think that the lenders and other stakeholders to retail businesses in the Australian market will get a lot out of the session.
Jennifer Ball
James, I understand that the presentation of your breakout session is going to be slightly different.
James Stewart
We believe the audience will both be entertained and educated by what they see and hear.
Jennifer Ball
Well James, thank you so much for giving us some insight to your breakout session, it sounds fantastic. I look forward to seeing you and our listeners in Shanghai very soon.
