Grocery (Short Mom & Pops; Long Dollar Stores & Judges)

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This is a good example of what happens when a Walmart ($WMT) rolls into town, prices compresses like a boss, and puts local shops out of biz. People have to drive 40 minutes to go grocery shopping. That's bananas. Which explains Dollar General Corp's ($DG) strategy to, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "build thousands more stores, mostly in small communities that have otherwise shown few signs of the U.S. economic recovery."Which, in turn, illustrates, in part, the juxtaposition between what is happening in various communities across the country and the macro-economy generally. On one hand you have a record 86th straight month of nonfarm payroll expansion and unemployment at 4.1%. On the other hand, you have job and resource drain. Apropos, Todd Vasos, CEO of DG is quoted, "The economy is continuing to create more of our core customer." Speaking of jobs, we now have two precedents for judges ordering shuttered/shuttering retailers to, uh, not shutter. Last week we noted that Starbucks' ($SBUX) plan to shut Teavana locations down got blocked by a judge siding with Simon Property Group($SPG). Now Whole Foods has run into the same problem. Landlords 1, failed retail 0? Seriously...are there ANY winners, here, really?

Is "OverBoarding" Really a Thing?

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ISS recommends that no director sit on more than five public boards, lowered from six back in February. The WSJ writes (firewall), "Major institutional investors, governance advisers and boards themselves are cracking down on so-called overboarding, trying to ensure that directors don’t spread themselves too thin. Overstretched directors lack time to adequately monitor management, these critics contend." This is so typical of regulators. So, no more than five public boards, huh? Well, what if one of us sits on, say, five public boards and like 205 private boards and doesn't have time for a Board call. Does that count as "overboarding." Fortunately, this sort of problem NEVER happens in the restructuring world. Btw, we have a bridge for sale. Interested?

Gawker.com Can Be Yours!

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Distressed Intellectual Property as Stocking Stuffer

Just what we always wanted: defunct intellectual property of one of the original prolific internet trolls. This Wall Street Journal piece notes that the brand, domain name, and social media accounts of Gawker.com will be up for sale shortly in order to provide a potential buyer an opportunity to develop a plan prior to the March 2018 termination of the post-sale publication restriction. Man, we crushed that run-on sentence. Anyway, the article also serves as (i) a solid marketing piece for Opportune-cum-Dacarba and (ii) a call-to-action for bankers to kiss-up to Opportune-cum-Dacarba. Well played. Seriously. Well played.