In a sign of improving economic confidence, a 30-year-old pawnbroker in the UK has gone into administration.
With the advent of the banking crisis in 2008 and its attendant recession, pawnbroker shops welcomed a brisk trade.
Now Albemarle & Bond has had to see PriceWaterhouseCoopers being called in.
The company expanded rapidly, nearly doubling its number to 188 stores in just three years.
It also suffered when the price of gold dropped from the September 2011 high of $1,921 an ounce to just over $1,300 today. At the time of gold’s record prices, A&B hailed the times the “age of the pawnbroker”.
Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group, the company’s two lending banks, are owned £51m by the company. The lenders announced that they were to appoint insolvency practitioners.
The company’s demise is said to have come after a desperate scramble where the board formally put the business up for sale, having melted down its gold stocks to keep its lenders at bay.
A&B began as just one shop in Bristol in 1983. It grew to employ more than 1,000 staff.
