I can't see Living Social surviving if it really is short that much money owed to merchants. Why on earth would any new merchants join at this point knowing that Living Social is reasonably unlikely to be able to pay them?
I'm a bit surprised the company is so nonchalant about running that far behind on merchant payables. An easy argument could be made that it should not have dipped in to merchant funds at all and all that cash should have been "restricted".
Also, the cheap shot on Groupon is pretty lame considering that Groupon has something like 2x the cash on had as it owes merchants (if I'm reading Sep '12 Balance Sheet correctly).
I'm a bit surprised the company is so nonchalant about running that far behind on merchant payables. An easy argument could be made that it should not have dipped in to merchant funds at all and all that cash should have been "restricted".
Also, the cheap shot on Groupon is pretty lame considering that Groupon has something like 2x the cash on had as it owes merchants (if I'm reading Sep '12 Balance Sheet correctly).