A reorganization plan submitted for a business in bankruptcy usually lays out how the company is going to try to fix itself and return to solvency.
And then there’s Bed Bath & Beyond’s reorganization plan.
They just filed it, but don’t get all excited: it is the final legal document officially burying the body retail. Just when you think the story is over, Bed Bath & Beyond comes back from the graveyard one more time to continue its agonizingly slow and painful death soliloquy.
Last Thursday what’s left of the company – which we assume are some attorneys, a few people pushing papers around at company headquarters in New Jersey and assorted scavengers – filed its reorganization plan in bankruptcy court but unlike many companies struggling through chapter 11, this plan is not about salvaging what’s left, much less presenting a plan to keep the company in business.
This one is all about digging that grave even deeper.
With its intellectual properties – the Bed Bath & Beyond and BuyBuy Baby names and websites – auctioned off and all stores in the process of being shut down, the plan basically focuses on the other remnant of the once proud retailer: its shares. According to the Wall Street Journal, shares in the company “shall be canceled, released and extinguished.” Doesn’t get any more final than that.
Which is also a bit of a downer for those hopelessly optimistic traders who have continued to buy those shares on the penny market where it has traded since the bankruptcy filing in April. At the time of that filing, the BBBY stock was trading at about 30 cents a share but as BBBYQ it has been as high as close to 40 cents a share as speculators bet there would be resurrection of the business. The past few days since the plan’s filing, the stock has sunk back to about 31 cents a share, still remarkable considering there really is no company anymore.
The court in New Jersey needs to rule on this plan but it’s unlikely there will be much debate given what’s happened so far in this dreadful process and what’s left. In the meantime, those meme traders and others who believe in Santa Claus will be keeping the faith…and their shares.
They will make lovely mementoes of what once was…and what could have been.
WarrensReport 