Toys 'R' Us goes into voluntarily administration in Australia
Toys 'R' Us Australia has gone into voluntary administration months after the US and UK stores collapsed.
Directors of the company appointed voluntary administrators McGrathNicol after the withdrawal of the final bidder for the sale of the Australian business, a McGrathNicol spokesman said in a statement on Monday.
All Toys 'R' Us and Babies 'R' Us stores will remain open and continue to trade while the administrators look at their options – either to sell the stand-alone Australian business or a recapitalisation through the voluntary administration process.
There are 44 retail stores across Australia which employs about 700 permanent staff.
No employee positions are affected by the appointment, the spokesman said.
However, Toys ‘R’ Us Australia will no longer offer refunds, and gift cards and vouchers will only be honoured if customers spent an additional equivalent amount.
Online orders and lay-bys will be delivered or honoured where goods have been paid for in full and the stock is available.
“The administrators will continue to pay employees and expect that employee entitlements will be met either through a sale of the business, recoveries from the sale of stock, or through the Commonwealth Government's Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG) Scheme,” the statement said.
Toys 'R' Us Australia posted a $7.7 million loss in the financial year to January 2017 and a $9 million loss the previous year.
It follows the announcement in March earlier this year that Toys 'R' Us in the US was preparing to sell or close all its 885 stores.
Administrators closed a quarter of the company's 100 UK stores by mid-March with plans to close the remaining stores by the end of April.