But the chances are if you can’t already see it then it

“But the chances are if you can’t already see it, then it isn’t there. Rival cable company Telewest is also likely to follow suit later in the year.And Marconi’s plan, like NTL’s and Energis’ before it, will, more than likely, result in long-suffering shareholders seeing the value of their equity all but destroyed.The only good news seems that, excluding a ‘force majeure’, analysts aren’t expecting any more UK companies to go down that route.”Any company can get itself into serious trouble,” said Robin Hardy, an analyst at WestLB Panmure. With Marconi on the cusp of announcing its long-awaited financial restructuring, shareholders in the troubled telecoms equipment maker look almost certain to join the growing list of investors walking away from refinancings empty-handed.
While so-called debt-for-equity swaps, where the company’s creditors agree to swap some or all of the money they lent for shares, might ensure the company has a future, they also ensure that shareholders have little or no part in it.When Marconi unveils its restructuring plan, probably before the end of this week, it will be treading a path already trodden this year by the cable firm NTL and the telecoms outfit Energis. Alternatively he may simply be losing his touch.jeremy.warner independent.co.uk. The other big shareholder in Coffee Republic is Julian Richer, the high-fi entrepreneur and a friend of Mr Hashemi’s He’s built up a 16.7 per cent stake Perhaps Mr Richer knows something the rest of us don’t.

It’s got problems enough of its own without taking on Coffee Republic as well. This is by no means a done deal and he’s said fast to be getting cold feet.Likewise Caff?ero, which has built up a 10 per cent stake in Coffee Republic. No wonder Benjys’ chief executive, Ian Rickwood, is proving such a reluctant marriage partner. It may seem a good idea hugely to expand its potential for growth by reversing into Coffee Republic, but just what sort of a liability would it be saddling itself with. Converting the chain to the Benjys format may seem like a good idea, but it has all got to be paid for, and in an increasingly tough high street environment, the investment may be hard to justify Likewise for Benjys. Coffee Republic is locked into lots of top-of-the-market rental agreements, some on stores it has since been forced to close, and it is haemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate. Ergo Mr Hashemi’s attempts to persuade Benjys, or some such other fast-growing chain of takeaway eateries, to reverse into his company and then convert to the sandwich concept.It’s not going to be easy.

In order to justify the very high rents these chains have signed up to, they need to be selling more than just coffee. Pret A Manger and other successful sandwich bar concepts will typically outsell a coffee bar by four times for the same amount of floor space and overhead cost. Its founders were wise to sell out when they did while coffee bars were still thought of as the next big thing.The trouble with selling cardboard cups full of coffee, it has turned out, is that however much you charge, you cannot sell enough of them to pay the rents and the wages. The apparent success of the Seattle Coffee Shop chain, eventually sold to and converted into the concept it was copied from, Starbucks, spawned a legion of other copycat formats – Costa Coffee, Coffee Republic, Caff?ero, Madisons and many minor versions of the same thing besides Even Seattle never made a profit. So much so that Coffee Republic’s Bobby Hashemi is threatening to give up the chase altogether and convert his group into a chain of bog standard sandwich bars.It’s easy to see why.