Cantillon: Stop the clock as Clerys investors call time

The Saturday silence of the tills in Clerys is matched only by the determined silence of D2 Private and Cheyne Capital Management, the new owners of the department store. Hundreds of jobs will be lost in the liquidation and sacked workers – some of whom served the firm for more than 40 years – will receive only statutory redundancy.

In this gloomy scenario, we have heard nothing at all from D2 Private or its principal Deirdre Foley and nothing either from Cheyne, an investment house specialising in property, debt and equity.

The liquidation was promptly set in train when their joint vehicle Natrium acquired Clerys from Gordon Brothers, the Boston firm, which bought the struggling store from receivers in 2012.

Ireland’s economic landscape has been transformed since then, but Clerys’ fortunes as a retailer have not.

That is not to say, however, that the historic property is without prospects. The opposite is the case. Thus the arrival on the scene of D2 Private and Cheyne smacks of nothing other than an unvarnished property play, with the iconic Clerys’ building on O’Connell Street the glittering prize and the staff who toiled there the collateral damage.

No other conclusion can be drawn from Natrium’s immediate removal of the operating business to a London-based insolvency practitioner for €1 and the subsequent approach to the High Court. Natrium, indeed, is described as a “real estate company” in the minimalist Gordon Brothers statement on the transaction, which did not disclose the price at which the business was sold. Atlanta firm Quadrant Real Estate provided financing but we don’t know how much.

It’s quite a sorry demise for the store, its windows shuttered yesterday evening after a hasty meeting with staff. A landmark for generations of Dubliners is gone.