The New Bedford Whaling Museum's Moby-Dick Marathon is an annual non-stop reading of Herman Melville's literary masterpiece. The multi-day program of entertaining activities and events is presented every January. Admission to the Marathon is free.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Borders Files Bankruptcy

Borders Group Inc., the owner of the Borders book superstore chain, filed a chapter 11 petition today in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.  Chapter 11 enables debtor companies to restructure their debt and equity so that they can (hopefully) avoid total liquidation.  Borders plans to close its underperforming stores, which supposedly amount to about 30% of the total. 

As the Wall Street Journal reports:
In its bankruptcy petition, Borders listed assets of $1.28 billion and liabilities of $1.29 billion as of Dec. 25.

Borders' five largest unsecured creditors are the book publishers Penguin Putnam Inc., Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster Inc., Random House and Harper Collins Publishers.
This has not surprised anyone, since Borders had announced that bankruptcy was a strong possibility a month ago.  More information about the case is available here.

UPDATE: The WSJ has posted a handy list of the stores to be closed, sortable by city, state, zip code, and size.  (May be gated.)  Six are listed in Massachusetts, including one on Boylston St. in Boston.
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1 comment:

  1. GansevoortFebruary 17, 2011 at 3:03 PM

    Our Dutch visitors to MDM15 will be sad to hear about this. They were impressed with the selection at the Boston Borders, and did some serious shopping there before returning home.

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