Voluntary administrators and receivers take control of the 188-year-old retailer as staff await news on store closures and employee entitlements
David Jones has entered voluntary administration for the first time in its 188-year history. The jobs of thousands of employees across Australia and New Zealand are now uncertain, weeks before Christmas.
Staff were told this morning (5 November) that the department store’s board had voted to appoint McGrathNicol as voluntary administrators, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. The retailer’s lender, Hilco Capital, then appointed Christopher Hill of FTI Consulting as receiver, according to The Australian Financial Review (AFR). The receivers will run the business until it is restructured and offered for sale. FTI is expected to give an update on store closures and job losses later this week.
The upmarket chain operates 38 stores across both countries and employs more than 6,000 people. Simon Woodhouse, managing partner of owner Anchorage Capital Partners, and David Jones chief executive Erica Berchtold fronted staff meetings in Melbourne to deliver the news.
The collapse followed failed negotiations with Scentre Group, the operator of Westfield shopping centres and David Jones’ largest landlord, over store closures and rent. According to the AFR, David Jones had sought three months of rent relief and a smaller store footprint. It had hoped to come out of the restructure with about 12 key stores.
Scentre told the AFR that David Jones had not paid rent since 30 September 2026. Scentre chief executive Elliott Rusanow said the landlord had made a “generous offer” that would have helped the retailer through the Christmas trading period, but it was rejected.
Anchorage bought David Jones from South Africa’s Woolworths Holdings in 2023 for less than $100 million. The AFR noted this is the third high-profile collapse of an Anchorage-owned business, after electronics retailer Dick Smith and cold storage operator Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics.
What does administration mean for David Jones employees?
HRD reported on 4 November that the union representing David Jones workers was already in contact with staff as reports of store closures mounted. That union is the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA). It said the 2024 David Jones Enterprise Agreement covers 4,644 employees, not counting executives and warehouse staff. SDA national secretary Gerard Dwyer said the union’s priorities were keeping as many staff employed as possible and protecting all legal and financial entitlements if redundancies occur.
Dwyer also welcomed the federal government’s payday super reforms for employers. The reforms took effect on 1 July 2026, and Dwyer said they would stop affected workers losing up to three months of superannuation.
The collapse echoes the failure of Mosaic Brands in 2024. In that case, the government fast-tracked entitlements for Mosaic’s retrenched staff, giving about 2,800 employees early access to the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG). The FEG is a last-resort federal scheme that covers unpaid entitlements such as wages, leave and redundancy pay when an employer becomes insolvent.
