Stationery and books retailer CNA has been placed in business rescue, amid the devastating Covid-19 effect.
According to Business Day, CNA has failed to pay some of its landlords and suppliers in recent months, and it has also faced mounting competition from other retailers operating in the same business space.
So you ask yourself what exactly does business rescue mean? This means that a company gets breathing space from debt and other repayments, while business rescue practitioners take full management control – until they decide whether the business can be restructured to survive.
The retailer has been hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept customers out of the country’s big malls, and its stores.
CNA has a massive footprint of approximately 163 stores in South Africa and a few others in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland.
One of its suppliers is Jonathan Ball Publishers, and its CEO, Eugene Ashton, told Fin24 that he believes going into business rescue will be a positive development for CNA.
“It will at least give them a chance to try rectify things. It was always going to be difficult taking over the business during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Ashton said.
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