HE HAD TO COUGH UP TO SAVE HIS EMPIRE

EARLY yesterday morning Sir Philip Green arrived at the central London headquarters of his retail group Arcadia and made an electronic transfer of £363million from his personal bank account to the badly holed BHS pension fund.

With that simple action he brought an end to 13 months of uncertainty, hardship, distress and political tumult which followed the decision of Dominic Chappell and the new owners of BHS to place the department stores group into insolvency.

Green’s decision to pay up and fulfil most of his responsibility for the BHS pension funds follows months of negotiations with the chairman of the BHS pension trustees Chris Martin, the Pen- sions Regulator and the Pensions Protection Fund (PPF), which steps in when retirement schemes fail.

As the retail entrepreneur cruised the Mediterranean last summer in his new yacht the Lionheart, Green insisted that he was prepared to make good on his share of the responsibility for the pension fund deficit as a previous owner.

Green always claimed to me that he could deliver a better deal for the 20,000 or so mem- bers of the BHS pension scheme than if responsibility was transferred to the PPF in which there are savage cuts in benefits especially for higher earners.

It is commendable that Green as a former owner has come forward with the cash necessary to assure the pension of BHS pension fund members.

He also has set aside a further contingency fund of £20million which will allow those with the lowest pensions to receive a cash lump sum if they so wish. But his decision to pay up did not just happen. It required enormous pressure from the media, from Frank Field and the House of Commons Work & Pensions Committee and a non-binding vote by MPs recommending Green be stripped of his knighthood.

But the real breakthrough came when the Pensions Regulator piled on the agony by taking the first steps towards legal action. It was the threat of being dragged through the courts that ultimately persuaded Green that he could no long escape his obligations.

In spite of apparent insouciance, Green and his family were deeply affected by the bad publicity and the destruction of his carefully built image as the ‘King of the High Street’.

The entrepreneur has spent the last few months keeping out of the public spotlight in which he revels.

Friends say that following the settlement he now feels he will be able to walk down Oxford Street again with his ‘head held high’ and will be given the benefit of the doubt for doing the right thing.

Under the deal, BHS pensioners will still get less than they expected made to them when they joined the scheme.

Nevertheless, life looks rosier for BHS pensioners than it did. Green’s continuing presence as a force in British retail required him to do a deal.