There were a couple of apparently unrelated items that caught my eye this morning.
Firstly, the news reported in The Times that "supermarkets and discount retailers are expected to enter the race to buy BHS".
Despite the fact that many of these stores have planning to allow the sale of food I doubt that the location, size and tenure of the BHS stores will make more than a handful of them attractive for convenience food stores without substantial investment.
I would expect Aldi and Lidl to show most interest. Tesco and Sainsbury less so as they will already be represented in many of the towns where BHS trade. Morrisons may show interest in some if the price is right.
However, in my view a trade sale is the more likely outcome.
The second item was the Q3 IMS from LondonMetric with Chief Executive Andrew Jones highlighting the "greater alignment to the growth of eCommerce through retail led distribution assets and the convenience of click and collect...."
Click and Collect is still strongly preferred by many customers and existing retail locations, close to transport links or houses themselves will continue to benefit from that.
Andrew is right to highlight the benefit of Click and Collect, but the question remains open about how to value that, both for occupiers and for landlords.
If there is an eCommerce value in the BHS trading locations then perhaps these two items are not as unrelated as they first appear.