Daily Mail

SIR SHIFTY, £50M ‘WOODY’ AND THE VAMPIRE SQUID

Just when you thought you couldn’t be any more enraged by the BHS scandal, read on...

- By Ruth Sunderland

MICHAEL SHERWOOD, the London boss of Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs is, like his great friend Sir Philip Green, a fully paid-up member of the ‘have yachts’, as the deck-lounging classes are known.

True, the banker only has one vessel to his name, not a flotilla of super-yachts like his mate Sir Shifty.

It’s a distinctio­n that was probably lost on the committee of MPs who interrogat­ed him yesterday on his relationsh­ip with Green and, in particular, on Goldman’s role in the highly controvers­ial sale of BHS.

The 11,000 BHS employees who are at risk of losing their jobs after Green sold the High Street chain for £1 to thrice-bankrupt charlatan Dominic Chappell are also unlikely to be versed in the maritime pecking order of the plutocrats.

But they, along with the 22,000 current and former staff in the BHS pension fund, certainly want to know more about the curious part played by Goldman Sachs in their fate.

Unusually, for a bank famed for its money- making acumen, Goldman agreed to work for Green on the deal free of charge. It is said to have acted as a ‘gate-keeper’ by checking out Chappell’s credential­s, though for its part it claims it did not act as a formal adviser and simply made ‘observatio­ns’. Already we had been offered one version of events by Philip Green when he appeared before the Commons committee in a long and combative hearing earlier this month. His message was clear. ‘If they had said, “Don’t deal with this guy”, that would have been the end of it . . . but that is not the advice that we got,’ he said.

So did Goldman really give Green the go- ahead for the disastrous sale to Chappell?

Far from it, according to Michael Sherwood’s evidence yesterday.

‘I absolutely do not accept blame,’ he insisted. ‘[Chappell] never passed our sniff test. All we highlighte­d was observatio­ns about the risks around Mr Chappell and the transactio­n. Our role was extremely limited.’

In other words, he was running a mile from Green’s suggestion that the deal went ahead because Goldman said it should.

Sherwood went on to tell MPs that the firm’s involvemen­t in the BHS saga has not enhanced its reputation. ‘ We’ve been reviewing Goldman Sachs’ relationsh­ip with Sir Philip Green at this point,’ he said with some bluntness.

Another intriguing allegation has emerged from the committee hearings. It was made by a London consultanc­y called LEK, which acted as advisers to a businessma­n named Paul Sutton, who was at one time in discussion­s with Sir Philip’s Arcadia retail group to buy BHS.

LEK — which said it had no notes from meetings with Paul Sutton — told MPs that Sutton had said ‘ Sir Philip was unwilling to sell out to any of his retail rivals, as this would also have personal reputation­al consequenc­es if a turnaround succeeded under their direction’.

In short, the allegation is that Green didn’t want to sell to someone who might make a success of the business, presumably because it would reflect poorly on his own stewardshi­p.

The implicatio­n, then, is that Green placed personal vanity above the welfare of BHS staff, thousands of whom now fear for their jobs, as well as thousands more who are still in the ailing company pension scheme.

Yesterday, Paul Sutton denied the LEK allegation­s, while Philip Green’s spokesman said they were ‘a complete load of nonsense’.

The challenge for MPs on the select committee now is to establish the truth about exactly what went on between Michael Sherwood’s Goldman Sachs and Philip Green. The fact that these two big beasts of the City have had a close relationsh­ip for more than a decade makes the situation all the more intriguing.

FIFTY-YEAR-OLD Sherwood — or ‘Woody’ as he is known — has been reluctant to face the committee, trying at first to fob off MPs with the offer of answering their questions in writing. He would no doubt rather have been reclining with his wife Melanie, 51, on their boat, which was bought several years ago for just over £17.5 million.

This top-end seafaring is unlikely to have impressed Frank Field, the redoubtabl­e pro-Brexit Labour MP and co-chair of the Select Committee that grilled Sherwood.

Nor indeed would Goldman Sachs’ £500,000 donation to the ‘ Britain Stronger In Europe’ campaign cut much ice with Field, or those of his Merseyside constituen­ts who voted for Britain to leave the EU.

The top brass at Goldman — know as the ‘Vampire Squid’ for its avaricious­ness — seemed utterly oblivious to how their pro-remain stance infuriated ordinary Britons who voted for Brexit, according to senior business figures. ‘They didn’t seem to realise that ordinary people would think, well, if Goldman Sachs wants us to stay in, I will vote the opposite,’ said one.

Whatever one’s views on the EU, however, there is little doubt that for Goldman, the BHS connection is a serious embarrassm­ent.

The downfall of the retail chain — which went under with a £571 million black hole in its pension fund — has revealed how the murky financial affairs of wealthy financiers can have devastatin­g effects on the lives of thousands of ordinary people.

ON THE face of it, a buccaneer like Green — whose fashion business Arcadia has been a client of Goldman since 2010, and whose family has a large chunk of its multi-billion-pound fortune tied up under management with Goldman — is an unlikely customer.

That, however, is to reckon without the close personal friendship he has forged over more than a decade with Michael Sherwood.

The link dates back to 2003, when the pair were introduced over a dinner organised by a Pr man named rory Godson in the Pied A Terre restaurant in central London.

It turned out to be a meeting of minds. Both were brought up in the London suburbs and both have a take-no-prisoners style.

Unusually for a top man at Goldman, Sherwood is not a smoothy- chops who charms the clients, but is more at home with the rough-and-tumble of the trading floor.

A year after his first meeting with Green, Sherwood was instrument­al in securing Goldman’s support for the retailer’s second takeover bid for Marks & Spencer.

The deal failed — ironically enough, given events at BHS, because Green was worried about the deficit in the M&S pension fund — but clearly there were no hard feelings as the two men continued to get together once every couple of months.

Their rendezvous usually took place at the Dorchester Hotel in London, where Green stays when he is not in his Monaco tax hideaway.

Sherwood, who went to the top public school, Westminste­r, joined Goldman in the Eighties straight out of Manchester University.

He cemented his status as a rising star in the Nineties when he ran the department dealing in European corporate debt.

It had been a backwater, but under his command became a serious moneymaker for the firm, and he won a coveted — and highly lucrative — partnershi­p aged just 29 that saw him on a seven-figure pay packet.

It goes without saying that Sherwood has become seriously rich. He earned £ 14 million last year, and

bagged a £50 million windfall when Goldman Sachs floated on the U.S. stock market in 1999.

He has been hauling in multimilli­on-pound annual pay cheques for the best part of three decades, but his net worth, in the hundreds of millions, is still well behind his billionair­e mate Green.

He does, however, own a stupendous penthouse worth tens of millions in a luxury complex in Miami Beach. The family also has a property on the Caribbean island of Grenada, as well as a magnificen­t London mansion in Hampstead, a leafy, and ultra-expensive, district of North London.

For those times when a yacht is just too slow, he and his wife Mel have a stake in a private jet through a company called Enerway. And just like Philip Green, Sherwood loves a good party.

He and his wife — who met at Manchester University — hosted a joint 50th bash last summer, taking over the Cala Di Volpe hotel on the Emerald Coast of Sardinia.

Their favourite Eighties pop stars provided the entertainm­ent, according to their son James, who excitedly posted on Facebook: ‘Blondie, Boy George, Kool And The Gang . . . what a great weekend, what a way to kick off the summer! Happy 50th, Mum and Dad!!’ Inevitably perhaps, Philip Green was in attendance. Sherwood is generous with some of his fortune.

He has given £10 million this year to Greenhouse, a charity that gives 11 to 15-year-olds from schools in deprived areas training in sports including table tennis, an unlikely passion of his. He is often to be seen heaving his well-fed frame with surprising agility around a pingpong table, after warming up in a special shell- suit monogramme­d with his initials.

In their social lives, he and Mel nibble canapes with the likes of Pippa Middleton at functions for the swanky Serpentine art gallery in Hyde Park, where he is a trustee. At Goldman Sachs, Sherwood is, if not universall­y liked, widely respected in the firm.

‘He is incredibly hard-working, the most senior Brit in the company, one of the youngest partners ever and he has dedicated his life to this place,’ said one.

NOT everyone is a fan, however. ‘Woody is the biggest a**e in the room, and has been sucking up to Philip Green for at least a decade,’ said one detractor. In the firing line with Sherwood yesterday at the parliament­ary hearing were two lieutenant­s, one of whom was an executive called Anthony Gutman.

While Sherwood was Green’s main contact at Goldman, it was Gutman, 42, a suave and charming figure, who did the donkey work.

In a phone call with Philip Green, Sherwood agreed that Gutman would ‘do a favour’ for the retailer and ‘look over’ Dominic Chappell as a prospectiv­e buyer of BHS. Green told the Commons committee that if Chappell had not passed the Goldman Sachs suitabilit­y test, he would ‘one million per cent’ not have done business with Chappell.

Yet Gutman has already told MPs that he did not advise Green, but merely offered informal ‘observatio­ns’.

These included the fact that Chappell was a bankrupt, with little retail experience.

At the heart of this investigat­ion into the sale of BHS is the relationsh­ip between ‘Woody’ Sherwood and Sir Shifty — arguably the most powerful banker and the most highprofil­e retailer in the land.

The pair are certainly kindred spirits whose fortunes — so far — have risen in tandem, but it remains to be seen whether their bond will survive the BHS debacle.

As both men are aware, in their circles, loyalty rarely outlives selfintere­st — and as for friendship, it is just another commodity.

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 ??  ?? Close: Philip Green (left) and Michael Sherwood (right) with TV’s Tania Bryer. Inset: The Miami complex where Sherwood has a home
Close: Philip Green (left) and Michael Sherwood (right) with TV’s Tania Bryer. Inset: The Miami complex where Sherwood has a home
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