Retail reeling
While Circuit City's problems predated the onset of the global recession, it will still be viewed as symptomatic of the times that it finally closed its doors for good this weekend.
Back in May 2008 Circuit City brought in Goldman Sachs to help the ailing retailer find a buyer and video rental giant Blockbuster was apparently interested initially, as was activist-investor Carl Icahn, but it doesn't look like any of that came to fruition.
Perhaps appropriately Microsoft launched its short-lived Equipt software-plus-services experiment exclusively through Circuit City, but by November it had filed for bankruptcy protection in a last-ditch attempt to turn things around.
This clearly failed and on 16 January this year Circuit City announced it was going into liquidation. It looks like its closing down sales was as well received as Woolworths' one in the UK, because it was expected to take a couple of months at least to shift all the stock. However it's been widely reported that the doors were shut for good yesterday.
The biggest retailer in the US - Best Buy - was due to start opening PC/telco convergence themed superstores in the UK this year through its joint ownership of Carphone Warehouse, but last week it was widely reported that the move has been put off until 2010.
