Restructuring
Miss Etam has sent a letter to its store owners, proposing lower rental prices. The group has been struggling for several years and recently divulged it would restructure the company once more, the second time in a short period.
V&D, a Dutch department store chain, currently refuses to pay rent as it also feels rental prices are too high. That company wants to suspend pay for several months and afterwards pay 7 % less from that point onward. Miss Etam does not take it as far as V&D, but is pleading for lower rental prices nonetheless. Experts have also stated that rental prices are too high: “Many smaller cities have huge shopping centers, because it was a political choice to build them. I estimate that store rental prices are 30 to 40 % too high”, according to Vastgoed Retail Adviseurs’s André van Lieverlo.
Real estate manager Corio notices that an increasing number of companies have asked for lower rental prices. It is willing to do so, if it can look into the renter’s accounting to see if rental prices are indeed a problem.
