It is not the shortfall making a retailer bust. It is the...

It is not the shortfall making a retailer bust. It is the business model or you can say a business risk. Will customer keep coming in to buy your stuffs?

Let's look at some retailers FY15 Balance Sheets for Woolworths and DSH and GFY and Fantastic
WOW DSH GFY FAN
(Cash+Receivables)/Current Liabilities= 24% 26.1% 70% 60%
Cash/ Current borrowings = 81% 41.8% nil cur debt 734%

So you can see actually GFY's position is not that bad, even you can say it is the best of the four listed companies. But I won't buy it either because you can also see that DSH goes bust while it held a similar position like WOW.

So what I am saying is that only looking at the shortfall hole could be kind of one-sided especially for retailers who always tried to delay/build up the Current Liabilities to generate more working capital.

I kind of superficially think the direct reason for DSH's bust is that it starts a fire-sale... that's a hugely dangerous signal for a retail business saying there are no customers coming in! The banks sees this and wants to save up their money so "force it" to go for voluntary administration. While others, like those smashed little mining service companies with big debts but not going down, why? because banks' money is secured by projects/contracts, specific project/contract will deliver specific money so the bank is kind of safe to lend out its money and hold on a while and wait for the companies to recover.

But you are right, GFY's financial report has some little tricks that make me sick.