At the risk of offending sensitivities, to purchase Waterstone's with their current estate liabilities would be akin to purchasing a football league club or taking a mistress - the costs rise radically from thereonin.

Many high street bookshops would be virtually worthless in the present economic and trading environment ; yes, my business would be no different, where the redeemable worth is merely in the unique desirable stockholdings rather than lease premium value, goodwill, etc.

"There doesn't seem to be a queue of other buyers coming forward..." Well there's a surprise then.....!

Well the bottom line is this.... HMV needs the cash.... and by the looks of things will take what they can get for Waterstones even if its not what it is worth.... But that is the business world.... The HMV board have to decide what to do and when they do live with it.... Perhaps they could have sold Waterstones before now but with all the problems with the HUB investment that the old guard of Gerry and Co left behaind made things difficult.... But now may be the time to off load Waterstone to give HMV some chance of survival...

If the lenders relax the covenants on HMVs borrowing which is highly likely given they have for JPR, LMR and others its not in the banks interest for HMV to sell waterstones cheap, hmv will tell Mammut in no uncertain to terms to stop taking the piss at £35 million.Waterstones did half a billion in sales last year and was a profitable business unit for hmv. Remember HMV made 78 Million last year and are posed to make 30 million year, dont write them off just yet. The intrest cost will go up for HMV as it breaches covenants, as its lenders reset it debts. probably 1 or 2% to 3 million a year so hmv will only make 27 million. for a company doing 2 bln in turnover 160 million of debt is not a big problem. when the dust clears HMV will recover.

Errr, Rubbish.

I'm afraid you understand incorrectly. Hmv has posted higher profits than waterstones I think for each year that they have owned them and no doubt will again this year. The problem is less about current profitability (A lot of retailers would jump at £30 million ish) but the direction that profit is moving. So you can't really set aside long terms sustainability as that is the core issue

My company is a supplier to HMV, and I have recently had to reluctantly terminate that relationship. Trends go only one way. To think that sales of physical books and CDs can survive the online era is like hoping that one day water will flow uphill. I doubt if our grandchildren will ever buy a book or a CD. any business argument that pleads sentimentality is doomed. The future will be streamed. Charity shops might do books and CDs , no one else. Like marriage counselling, the discussion above points in only one direction.

Jon Neville - "The future will be streamed"

You are so correct. Books, Media, Films, Gaming, Newspapers, Magazines, Music and eventually most TV will be on demand too. Any retailer that currently trades in the physical versions of these must diversify - pronto.

Meanwhile, has anyone been into a Waterstones branch recently?

They haven't bought anything outside the top 1000 titles and customers orders for over a month now, and every store - or at least those that I have been into - have almost everything face out to give some illusion that they have some stock.

Our sales the chain have slumped from 10% of our monthly turnover to, well, near enough zero in 4 weeks.

Unless the sale goes through in some form, and the new management give some clear direction on where they see the chain going pretty fast, god knows what will happen, but it won't be pretty!