The sale of 184-year-old department store David Jones is expected to close as early as this week.
Private equity firm Anchorage Capital Partners is expected to pay a price closer to $125 million, without the Bourke Street flagship store, which is valued at $250 million itself.
It was initially believed that Anchorage would pay $200 million for the business including the Bourke Street real estate, effectively valuing the struggling department store at less-than-zero.
In the eight years since South African Woolworths Holdings bought David Jones for A$2.1 billion, the once grand department store has been all but gutted.
David Jones trawled through five CEOs over six years, and endured three years of straight losses, which only ended last year due to a 70.4 million JobKeeper handout.
It embarked upon a disastrous and mismatched dual-branding exercise with BP service stations, shut the majority of its food halls, and trimmed overall floor space by 7 per cent across the 40 stores.
The company offloaded the flagship Sydney CBD Elizabeth St building for $510 million, and the menswear stores in its Bourke St building, in the Melbourne CBD, for $121 million.