So, I guess the sky is falling.

Retailers Taking Their Medicine and Turning Cautious Over Growth

Retail Industry Experts Say Closing Stores and Pulling Back is the Right Move in this Market

The past couple months in retail real estate have been laden with more store closing announcements and news of retailers slowing expansion plans than we've seen in a long time. However, two retail real estate strategy executives, a Wall Street retail analyst and a leading Texas retail real estate broker, confide that closing stores and turning cautious over expansion plans may be the best thing for retailers to be doing right now.

Announcements over the last couple months include Movie Gallery closing another 400 stores; Charming Shoppes closing 150 stores and cutting expansion plans by 50%; Starbucks closing 100 stores and slowing expansion plans by 34%; Ann Taylor shuttering 117 stores and slowing store growth; Boston Market evaluating its real estate opportunities; Buffet Holdings sorting out its underperformers; Sprint Nextel closing 125 stores and 4,000 distribution points; Cost Plus World Market closing 18 stores; Liz Claiborne closing 54 Sigrid Olsen stores; New York & Company axing the Jasmine Sola brand and its 32 stores; Ethan Allen closing 12 stores; PacSun closing all of its 173 demo stores; and Talbots exiting its kids and men's lines through closure of 78 stores.

Others include Rite Aid exiting Nevada by closing 28 stores; Macy's closing nine stores; Krispy Kreme expecting many franchisees to close stores; Kirkland's Home likely closing 130 stores; CompUSA's remaining 103 stores being disposed of; Rent-A-Center closing 280 stores; Sofa Express closing 44 stores in bankruptcy; 84 Lumber closing 12 stores; Home Depot closings some call centers; Levitz Furniture disposing of 76 stores in bankruptcy; Pep Boys closing 31 stores; Lifetime Brands closing 30 stores; Big A Drugs liquidating its 21 stores; and more.

CoStar Group

---

Friedman's Inc., which operated 455 retail jewelry stores, to Hold Bankruptcy Liquidation Sale

---

Investment bankers in search of a new business model

“We haven’t seen anything as bad as this in the 30-year period we looked at,” said James Davis at consultants Oliver Wyman, who recently conducted a review of investment banking with Nick Studer at Wyman and Huw van Steenis at Morgan Stanley. “You’d probably have to go back to the 1930s to get something quite as bad.”

The study takes as a base case that net revenue in investment banking falls 18% this year, but might fall as much as 45% in a “bear” scenario.
Financial Week