So is Tim Waterstone, the bookstore chain’s founder, really making a bid to buy the company back? HMV wants a formal offer, and it looks like he’ll be going through with it, thirteen years after walking away from the whole enterprise. He gives all the usual sob-story reasons for buying back in (at a reported 280 million pounds) which boils down to “being obsessed with Waterstone’s being run badly.”
That said, many are understandably skeptical about Waterstone’s alleged plans. Says Evolution Securities Nick Bubb to the Bookseller, “Nobody is likely to take him [Tim Waterstone] too seriously, given the long- standing grudge he bears about the business, though the price is a good one. “All this from Tim Waterstone is probably therefore just a bit of a side-show, but it does underline the point that the market may be getting too confident about a bid for Ottakars materialising.”
And what happens if HMV does divest itself of Waterstone’s? “The big problem is that if they sell Waterstone’s it leaves the company as just HMV which is having a shocking time and faces major issues on a longer-term basis too,” said another unnamed analyst. Which, of course, could lead to a whole host of other problems down the line…