I'd worked for the business for over 5 years when Woolies foolishly sold out to Anchorage. about 9 months prior to Anchorage buying, woolies liquidated a whole bunch of stores (mostly the old Powerhouse stores in NSW/VIC, ironically some had only been renovated literally a few months prior) and things were looking dire... like, it seemed at the time like Woolies was getting close to pulling the trigger and declaring the business insolvent and closing it rather then selling it - there were periods where it was quite obvious that certain manufacturers were not providing stock based on this risk, and that most stores during the peak of this period prior to the anchorage sale were less then half stocked.
Then Anchorage buys - promises managers and staff all sorts of positive changes but realistically did very little and very blatantly doing as much as they could to get the business at maximum profitability just before the IPO - they decide to clear inventory and reprice a significant amount of old/dated stock, implement a new bonus scheme (which essentially made it impossible for managers to get bonuses, and impossible for staff in all but the busiest stores to get bonuses) and slash staffing before the IPO. I alongside most of the management at the time in my area left some months before the IPO was floated.
Anyway, that isn't the most relevant part of this - it was well known inside the business prior to the anchorage sale that Woolies took a massive slice of dick smiths modest profit (or occasional loss) to pay for Dick Smith's share of "shared services" - e.g. alarm monitoring, maintenance, HR etc. As a result, anchorage had the ability to show a massively improved balance sheet prior to the IPO simply as a result of the dick smith business no longer belonging to Woolworths.
Both ways, anchorage has had the last laugh. And Woolies now has both Masters and Big W bleeding more cash then Dick Smith ever did for them... funny how things turn out. And on that topic? Don't be surprised if Woolies gets screwed again cutting Masters or Big W loose...
