Archive for April 7th, 2009

Rite Aid Shutting 117 Stores

Rite Aid Corp. is planning to shut down as many as 117 stores over the next year as it tries to cut costs after the drugstore operator’s loss more than doubled in the fiscal fourth quarter.

The Camp Hill, Pa., company said the closings would be scattered around the country, targeting stores with weak sales and those that are close to another Rite Aid.

Link.

Bankruptcies and Liquidations:

Potential Bankruptcies & Liquidation Impact: 1,362 confirmed closures out of about 2,476 stores

Announced Closings

Total Closings: up to 1,175 U.S. stores

Potential Impact of All Announcements to Date: 2,537 closures out of up to 3,651 potentially affected U.S. stores

S&P Warns of Coming Rating Cuts on Recent CMBS Deals

Uh oh. This doesn’t sound promising.

Standard & Poor’s on Monday said it will make negative pronouncements on U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities on a “large scale” in coming days after a review of the securities.

The most-recently issued CMBS are “highly susceptible” to downgrades, including top-rated “AAA” issues, after the review that accounted for eroding real estate markets, lack of financing for the assets, and the economic recession.

“We concluded that the ratings on a significant portion of our CMBS portfolio may no longer be appropriate, given our view of the increase in credit risk,” S&P said in a statement.

The $700 billion market for U.S. CMBS last year was one of the worst performing bond sectors as the credit crunch raised concerns that aggressively underwritten loans would fail to get refinanced at maturity, and force many borrowers into default. Signs of a weakening economy added to those pressures since CMBS payments are drawn from the revenue off office, retail and apartment buildings, and hotels.