Total dividend of 51.03 cents in dollar for Payless Shoes creditors

Finally, the shoes fit: creditors get a final return after the 2017 Payless Shoes collapse.

Payless Shoes is set to get the final boot by creditors at a meeting on April 29.

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Creditors of the crushed Payless Shoes will meet this month to decide whether to give the final boot to the Parramatta-based company after it collapsed two years ago with debts of more than $18 million.

Administrators Ferrier Hodgson has confirmed total dividends of 51.03 cents in the dollar have been paid to unsecured creditors, ahead of a meeting on April 29.

“The purpose of the upcoming meeting of creditors is to terminate the deed of company arrangements and finalise the matter via the liquidation process,” a Ferrier Hodgson spokesman said today.

Marrickville Payless Shoes was one of the company’s 132 stores to close in 2017.

Payless Shoes went into administration in February 2017, forcing the closure of 132 stores and the loss of 730 jobs.

It was the second time in four years that the business had been placed into administration. In 2016, it had 870 staff and $75 million in annual sales.

The Rydalmere-based company, which opened its first store in 1980, was acquired in March 2013 by American company Payless ShoeSource, saving it from financial ruin at the time.

Creditors accepted Ferrier Hodgson’s recommendation in December last year not to pursue the company’s overseas-based directors because legal costs were estimated to cost up to $1 million.

“It is our intention to terminate the DOCA via a meeting of creditors (on April 29) and place the company into liquidation,” Ferrier Hodgson said in an update to creditors this week.

The meeting will be at Ferrier Hodgson’s Sydney office at Level 25, One International Towers, 100 Barangaroo Ave.