Sir Philip must save Topshop in Australia

BILLIONAIRE retailer Sir Philip Green is mounting a rescue bid for the Australian arm of Topshop after it collapsed into administration.

The High Street brand has opened 24 stores in the country after Sir Philip sold the rights to Australian tycoon Hilton Seskin in 2011.

Most of these are concessions in the branches of Australia’s biggest department store chain, Myer, although it also has nine standalone shops.

But on Wednesday, Austradia, which operates the franchise, was forced to call in the administrators after suffering from mounting losses.

Administrator James Stewart, from Ferrier Hodgson, has offered assurances that it is business as usual, but its collapse has threatened 760 jobs.

Now Sir Philip is working on a rescue bid which could see him take ownership of the business.

He has dispatched a pair of executives from his Arcadia group to Australia to work on a solution, but has yet to make a decision on its future.

Measures could include persuading landlords to reduce rents, while Arcadia is talking to Myer about continuing the partnership between the two brands.

‘Assuming we can resolve the issues, we will see if we can do something,’ said Sir Philip. ‘We need to see where we get to in the next few days.’

If Sir Philip does decide to bring the Australia business into the Arcadia fold, it would mark his first major deal since he opened Topshop stores in China last year.

The British High Street staple has 140 stores outside the UK.

Sir Philip is seeking to move on from a turbulent couple of years which eventually saw him pay £363m to fill the black hole in the pension fund left behind when BHS collapsed in April last year. The department store chain failed just 13 months after Sir Philip sold it for £1 to thrice bankrupt businessman Dominic Chappell, who had no retail experience. Its demise caused 11,000 people to lose their jobs and threatened the retirement income of 20,000 current and former workers.

Sir Philip faced criticism about how much he had taken out of the business in dividends before selling it to Mr Chappell, a former racing car driver.

Details of the potential rescue bid for the Australian business come after reports that Lord Grabiner – chairman of Arcadia parent company Taveta Investments – is about to become the latest high-profile departure from the group after 15 years leading the board.

He came under fire last year after his appearance before a joint parliamentary inquiry into the collapse of BHS, when MPs said that he gave a ‘complacent’ performance.