With media reports castigating the Wilkinson family for extracting some £77m in dividends across the past decade, including £3m last year despite the business having posted a loss, there is a glimmer of hope that administrators will strike deals quickly to enable the jobs of a significant number of Wilko employees to be saved.
Meanwhile, other retailers have been quick to invite Wilko employees to apply to them for jobs. It is understood that with all stores being traded on under the management of PwC, Wilko staff will, for the time being, continue to be paid ‘as usual’.
However, a deficit in the Wilko pension scheme of around £16m is causing deep concern and is unlikely to be satisfied with sale proceeds. Wilko’s owner AHWL has defended its record of taking dividends insisting that most had been invested in other ventures rather than being taken by individual family members. This hardly explains why the monies were not instead invested in plugging the pension fund deficit and future-proofing the Wilko business to enable it to better compete with its more agile competitors.
Both B&M and Poundland are purported to have expressed interest in all or part of the business, but it seems that the descendants of Wilkinson’s founder James Kemsey Wilkinson and/or those representing them are set to face a grilling from the PPF.
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