Booktopia has appointed voluntary administrators, weeks after suspending its shares on the ASX as it scrambled to secure emergency funding, with rival Dymocks considering snapping up some of its assets. The embattled online book retailer has appointed McGrathNicol restructuring partners Keith Crawford, Matthew Caddy and Damien Pasfield as administrators who will reassess the business and explore a sale or recapitalisation. Tony Nash’s Booktopia has been handed over to administrators.
Credit: Julian Andrews Booktopia, Australia’s biggest online bookseller, has been buckling under increasing financial strain for years following three straight years of unprofitability, a share price that has lost 98 per cent of its value, and a revolving door of senior executives including its most recent chief executive David Nenke, who resigned after exactly one year in the job . It has made at least 90 jobs redundant in the past 18 months. Tony Nash, the co-founder who was ousted from the business he helmed for 18 years , was temporarily brought back into the business as an executive director and sales director.
Book chain and rival Dymocks is mulling the purchase of some of Booktopia’s assets, particularly its fulfilment and distribution centres. Dymocks will consider whether any of Booktopia’s assets are worth acquiring. Credit: Rhett Wyman “We would be silly not to have a look and see if there’s anything there that might be useful to us,” Dymocks chief executive Mark Newman s.
