MEGA-RICH LIFESTYLE OF SIR PHILIP GREEN
HE WAS once the king of the high street, enjoying luxury holidays and lavish bashes where he cosied up to glamorous celebrities.
At one time, business titan Sir Philip Green counted Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell and Simon Cowell among his A-list friends.
And he has been pictured at countless events with his arms draped around the likes of Liz Hurley, Kate Moss, Beyonce and Cara Delevingne.
The tycoon enjoys the trappings of his enormous wealth and is not shy about showing it off.
He commutes to London by private jet from Monaco and stays in his own suite at The Dorchester hotel in Mayfair.
His vast personal fortune comes from building a retail empire that stretched from Topshop and Topman to Burton and Miss Selfridge.
But his crown slipped with the doomed sale of BHS to investors with no retail experience in 2015. A year later, the department store went to the wall with 11,000 job losses and a £571million pension fund black hole.
After lengthy talks, Green agreed a £363million settlement with regulators.
Yet it was not enough to restore the image of a man who, in 2006, was knighted for services to retail by then prime minister Tony Blair.
Green was born into a well-off family from north London in March 1952.
After leaving school, he forged a career in business. He started out working for a shoe-importing firm and began to rake in money through a series of shrewd business deals.
But not all of his brash deal-making paid off. In the early 80s, he opened a discount designer shop in Mayfair and persuaded Joan Collins to collaborate on a denim range. Green boasted of booming orders but the range flopped and had to be sold off at huge discounts. But he bounced back.
The opulence and extravagance of Green’s lifestyle are typified by his birthday celebrations.
For his 50th, 220 guests were flown on a private plane to a luxury hotel in Cyprus.
Messages came from stars including Britney Spears and Sylvester Stallone, who reportedly told him: “Men don’t really become sexy until they’re 50.”
The celebrations, said to have cost £5million, culminated in an infamous toga party, with Green dressed like Emperor Nero as Rod Stewart performed.
His 55th birthday party in 2007 was even more ostentatious and rumoured to have cost £20million. Held in the Maldives, it featured live performances from Gladys Knight & the Pips, George Michael and Jennifer Lopez.
Green also lavished money on select friends, including flying over Earth, Wind and Fire for Cowell’s 50th.
Yet what has been conspicuous since the controversy around the chain’s demise is the lack of celebrity friends willing to back him in public.
Cowell, for example, hasn’t spoken to him for almost three years. Friends say he lost all respect for Green over the way he dealt with the BHS pension crisis.
But with questions over Green’s empire, it seems the billionaire may have lost his own once-legendary magic touch.