The Wall Street Journal has a report that Barnes & Noble’s management isn’t interested in acquiring Borders Group, which put itself up for sale in March.
The Journal article says that there are bound to be a bunch of bitter investors who bought up Borders stock in anticipation of such an acquisition. Apparently Barnes & Noble was considering such a deal until recently.
We would assume that landlords are happy about such news, as store closures after such a deal would be inevitable. But would the combination have worked?
Borders is looking to end its auction process next month. Who is a likely buyer, if anyone, right now?
Counter Culture 
I don’t think a B&N-Borders combination would have worked, they’re too similar, there was no real advantage to B&N.
Borders stores are monstrously large, huge. You could probably fit 2 decent B&N’s inside one Borders. “Large” isn’t B&N’s ouevre — there’s a intimacy you feel when you walk in to a B&N stores. Borders shops, while clean, have more of a feel of a Wal-Mart just in physical size, and its daunting.
Real Estate considerations – we go back to what we discussed yesterday with CVS drug stores saturating the market,competing against themselves, as well as B&N having to assume lease or sale obligations for many locations B&N really couldn’t use.
End of the day — have you ever seen a B&N where a Borders wasn’t in some kind of walking proximity to it? Not buying Borders was a smart play by B&N, no need to — B&N would simply be “re-buying” its own market share, and probably, and a huge mark-up!
Barnes & Noble may have learned what they needed to know from taking a preliminary look at Borders. Now all they want is for Borders to go away, apparently they are willing to bet that will happen. If a player enters the arena that presents any kind of real threat to B&N I am sure they can step back in.
Considering the illiteracy rate in our country, it’s no surprise if another book store falls.
Maybe Warren Buffet will buy Borders, turn them into public libraries, and become the Andrew Carnegie of the 21st century. By the way, whatever happened to philanthropy? Is it out of style? Seems like the wealthy have all but abandoned the arts, the humanities, etc…. But then again, more people have become millionaires, lately, than ever, but I guess with the dollar devaluation, they have to be at double your money to get there.
I hate it when companies use acquisition excuses to nose around their competitors to siphon off information, it’s so low. I also hate it when companies use interviews to try and gather corporate information, that’s low, too.