tle upside opportunity to balance it. If nothing else, a merger will shake up the share price of both parties. The second consideration is one of competitive position. The department store marketplace in this country is overdue for structural change and that is being forced upon us through the entry of new players and new technology changing the distribution paradigm. It is the world’s worst kept secret that Harvey Nichols will be opening at least one store soon, Marks & Spencer is in the final stages of planning, and John Lewis, and even Debenhams are reviewing their options to enter. Kmart has re-drawn the lines and Target will – sooner or later despite who ends up owning them – fight back. In a well thought through strategy, Myer could be used to cover Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, and the upper end of Target and Kmart, leaving David Jones to become a sharper competitor to Harvey Nichols and any other international premium department stores targeting this market. The third consideration is one of internal change that needs to occur within both Myer and David Jones to restructure them both to be able to better compete with the reality of the 21st century marketplace. With the ability to be able to quarantine merger restructuring costs as a one off extraordinary item, cost savings (synergies) could be more easily achieved without hitting the current accounts and impacting share price. Additionally a merger would allow the businesses to change their culture in order to align them more clearly with consumers, suppliers, and the new distribution paradigm in order to optimise the profit potential for the business in the medium term. Arguably, the shotgun is being used by investors to drive the two parties to the altar. Whether they get there in the end will be dependent on a range of complex factors and the structure of the deal making sense to investors. But in a country way over supplied with department stores and landlords who are beginning to make the transition towards the shopping centre model of the future where they do not rely on department stores to drive foot traffic, this is a welcome debate at the very least. Let’s just hope that the couple fall in love and bring about the structural change in the market that will allow all of us to live happily ever after.