Clarks' Shoes And The Countdown To Their Future

For anyone who is under 60 we should explain that Clarks’ shoes are the brand people who have lost all hope for death as well as life choose to be buried in. They are just bendy enough to get under the lid and won’t offend anyone who happens to take a peak at the body before the main event happens. 

They are to style what Stoke-on-Trent is to the Seven Wonders of the World, which explains why it is Clarks’ pension trustees who are working with advisers amid talks about the chain’s future. They are, after all, the company’s target market. Clarks’ retirement scheme has drafted in those snappy dressers from our friends at FRP Advisory (with just a little help from Penfida) amid advanced discussions with two potential bidders. 

Despite promising dreadful, terribly unprofessional outcomes for them that could have massively benefited their students in next month’s JIEB exams FRP wouldn’t be drawn on the identity of the bidders, but we are guessing they might be G Laucoma (Investors PLC) and the Stevie Wonder School of Fashion (but, honestly, this is just speculation).

Sources away from FRP tell the NTI newsroom that the pension trustees were "actively engaged" with the company about interest from LionRock Capital and Alteri Investors, both of which have submitted offers that would involve a significant dilution of ownership stake of the chain's founding family. Talks would have gone further, but the trustees needed a little sit down and to catch up with Monday’s nail-biting conclusion on Countdown, when one of the contestants guessed the nine letter conundrum in just three seconds from the jumbled letters B Y F D D U K C U