Green’s top shops plunge into the red

TYCOON Philip Green’s Top Shop and Top Man chains plunged nearly £11million into the red last year.

They crashed from a near £60million profit the previous year after a fall in sales and a rise in costs. However, the biggest factor was slashing the “goodwill” value of the business by £45million.

The figures cover Top Shop and Top Man’s UK arms and their online operations worldwide, but not overseas stores.

Accounts also showed Green’s wider high street empire shed more than 2600 jobs last year after a wave of store closures. Forty-six shops directly controlled by the Green family’s Arcadia business – which also includes Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis – closed in the year to the end of August when their leases expired. The firm secured rent reductions on another 25 shops. Accounts released by Companies House for Taveta Investments, Arcadia’s parent company controlled by Lady Green, showed their retail workforce fell from 23,128 to 20,510 last year.

The accounts do not include hundreds of threatened job losses among managers at Top Shop and Top Man, which were revealed in January this year.

Yesterday’s published accounts said 2017 had been a “year of great uncertainty, primarily driven by the UK’s vote to leave the European Union. UK customers are less certain about the future due to rising inflation and the falling value of the pound”.

Green, whose reputation was hammered over the collapse of BHS, has denied claims he has held talks about selling Arcadia.