Appliance retail entrepreneur John Winning has taken to his blog to deny reports in the Australian Financial Review that investment banks had been appointed to investigate taking the Winning Group public.

The article in the Fin was punctuated with several factual errors — somewhat detracting from its ability to convince — and Winning seemed to take great pleasure pointing this out:

“Well it has been an interesting day for me waking to many phone calls, emails and texts about an article that ran in today’s paper,” Winning wrote on his excellent if infrequently updated blog.

“After actually reading it I can now safely say that the information contained within the article is speculative and has a few errors.

“For starters, my family’s business is called Winning Appliances not ‘Winnings Appliances’, the business is 108 years old not 107 years old and no, we have not appointed Macquarie Capital, Goldman Sachs or any other brokers for [an] IPO (initial public offering).

“Like any growing business, we examine our options from time to time however speculation that we have made a decision to IPO is incorrect.”

According to the Winning Group’s website, the Winning family retains 100 per cent ownership of the company.

UnderCurrent’s bit:

Although the factual errors are hard to defend, the gist of the Fin article is in keeping with the scuttlebutt currently  surrounding the Winning Group. One of the more persistent rumours is that John Winning wants to concentrate more on his refurbished and, frankly, outstanding bricks and mortar ventures, which sell premium appliances at high average selling prices. To that end, there has been speculation in the industry that the Winning Group would sell off its online assets, most notably Appliances Online and BigBrownBox.