Talks ongoing over future of Borders’ Gulf stores

The Dubai-based firm, which holds the UAE franchise for the
bookstore, said it hopes to make an announcement on the status of its outlets
within a month.  

 “We are still in
talks with our US lawyers. We still need time, we should know in four weeks,” Mahendra
Malhotra, general manager of Borders, UAE, told Arabian Business.

Michigan-based Borders filed for protection from creditors
Feb 16, listing debt of $1.29n and assets of $1.28bn. The company is liquidating
its assets and expects to lay off about 11,000 employees, after efforts to
salvage parts of the business failed during negotiation talks.

The retailer lost business as customers switched to
e-readers such as Amazon.com’s Kindle, introduced in 2007. Barnes & Noble
invested in its own Nook device to attract customers.

Borders has six stores in the UAE and two in Oman. The Al
Maya Group, which also operates supermarkets, opened its first Borders store in
2006 and splanned to expand across the GCC.

The bookseller is one of several international retailers to
go bust as customer spending plummeted in the wake of the global downturn.

Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim Fashions in August said it was in
talks with the owners of the UK fashion chain Jane Norman after the chain went
into administration in June.

Despite a global decline in consumer spending tourists have
continued to flock to the UAE’s shopping malls and hotels. The emirate’s hotels
outperformed the Middle East significantly in June by posting a 12 percent
year-on-year rise in occupancy to 70 percent, according to data from Deloitte
and STR Global showed.

Local events such as Dubai’s summer shopping sale helped
spur a 14 percent boost in revenue per available room (RevPAR) to $111, the
companies said in a joint report in August. 

The increase was “an achievement in the face of increased
supply,” analysts said, aided by the city’s reputation as a safe haven amid the
Arab Spring revolts.