‘Deplorable and complacent’ — the QC who oversaw deal
A LEADING barrister who oversaw the BHS sale could be stripped of his right to be a company director after MPs condemned his ‘deplorable’ performance as ‘remarkably docile’ and ‘complacent’.
Anthony Grabiner, QC, admitted that he had not heard of buyer Dominic Chappell and did not know he had been bankrupt until he read it in newspapers following the deal.
Despite the fact he was chairing the company which ultimately owned BHS, he failed to attend – and was not even aware of – the meeting in which the sale to Mr Chappell was approved, MPs note.
They say the Labour peer now has ‘serious questions to answer’ about his ‘deplorable performance’ which played a key role in the company’s downfall.
The 71-year-old lawyer, who earns £3million a year, could even be stripped of his right to be a company director as a result of his failings, they add. Lord Grabiner, who was reportedly paid £3,000 an hour to oversee News Corporation’s internal investigation into phone hacking, was chairman of Taveta Investments, which ultimately owned the BHS store chain.
But in a demonstration of the lawyer’s ‘remarkably relaxed attitude to decision making’, he was not invited to, nor even aware of, the meeting to approve its sale.
Had he attended, MPs say, he could have asked whether the buyer had a credible plan to turn around BHS’s fortunes. Instead, he was paid £125,000-a-year to provide what MPs describe as a ‘veneer of establishment credibility’ to a company that Sir Philip ran as ‘his own personal empire’.
The MPs add that they found a ‘paucity of challenge and oversight which allowed Sir Philip to run [the Taveta group] as a family empire’. Taveta was described as the retail magnate’s ‘personal fiefdom’ with a board which acted on ‘a shared understanding of his wishes’ rather than in the interests of the companies it owned.
Lord Grabiner demonstrated ‘weak governance arrangements’ and there was ‘meagre evidence’ that anyone ever challenged or overrode Sir Philip’s decisions, they said.
This allowed the ‘overarching interests of the Green family to prevail and facilitated the flow of money off shore to the ultimate beneficial owner of the parent company, Lady Green.’
The committee adds that the lawyer demonstrated a ‘remarkably docile attitude for a Chairman of the board’ and that these weaknesses ‘contributed substantially’ to the ultimate demise of BHS. ‘The complacent performance of Lord Grabiner as the non-executive Chairman of the Taveta group boards represented the apogee of weak corporate governance,’ says the report.
‘In that position it was his responsibility to provide independent challenge and oversight. Instead he was content to provide a veneer of establishment credibility to the group while happily disengaging from the key decisions he had a responsibility to scrutinise. For this deplorable performance he received a considerable salary.’
It is a remarkable fall from grace for a man who was once considered a possible contender for the next Lord Chancellor.
Raised in Hackney, East London, Anthony Grabiner won a scholarship to grammar school before studying law at the London School of Economics. He was among the UK’s highest-paid QCs.
He was appointed non-executive chairman of Taveta Investments, which owns the Arcadia Group, which in turn owned BHS, in 2002. His first cousin Ian Grabiner, chief executive officer and chief operating officer of Arcardia Group, is also criticised in the report.
Iain Wright MP, Chairman of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, said: ‘Lord Grabiner was dismal. He gave no challenge to Sir Philip Green, making the board impotent. He hasn’t done his job properly.’