This is an old, old, OLD story. BSM is now owned by the same company which owns the AA. This has been the case since early 2011.
I am beginning to get hits on this search term, or something similar. I’ve also heard rumours.
If it’s BSM franchisees searching, I don’t think you have much to worry about. BSM is not going to disappear just like that – even if the current owners are in a poor financial state, a business that size, in this industry, with that name is not just going to vanish!
I would be surprised if many companies are in absolutely buoyant financial bliss at the moment, so the fact that rumours are circulating is not really a big deal. If it went bellyup, somone would buy it in an instant.
BSMs problems now are the same problems it has always had. It’s just that in a recession, where people are cutting costs and perhaps seeing a bit of a downturn in business, a company like BSM – which relies on the fairly hefty franchise fees it charges – it has nowhere to else to go. It can’t put franchise fees up any more without losing a lot of people, and like most businesses it has been typically greedy and gobbled up any profit it made on overheads. I guess that’s why offices have been shut down progressively.
I fully expect a big change in their structure soon, but like I say it won’t mean that much for ADIs. PDIs, though, might not fare so well…
Of course, there is every possibility that some of those searching are simply voyeurs trying to see if there’s any truth to these rumours. Time will tell.