Bid to claw back £8m fees from sale of BHS

INVESTIGATORS probing the collapse of BHS are set to force blue-chip City firms who worked on the store’s sale to hand back more than £8m, the Mail understands.

Administrators liquidating the final assets of the department store are trawling through three years of payments in a bid to claim back any deals that could have disadvantaged creditors.

Particular attention is being paid to the multi-million-pound fees dished out to the advisers who aided thrice-bankrupt Dominic Chappell in buying BHS from Sir Philip Green for £1.

Lawyers Olswang, which is merging with fellow legal giants CMS and Nabarro, was paid £3.7m and Grant Thornton earned £4.4m for help to push the deal through. The sums included £1.2m each as a success fee for arranging the deal but the rest was earned for other advice to Chappell and his company, Retail Acquisitions Ltd.

Both have been criticised by billionaire tycoon Green – dubbed Sir Shifty – for failing to highlight the previous business problems experienced by Chappell and that he had no experience of running a High Street store.

If administrators are able to haul back the fees from these firms it could be used to help plug the £571m black hole in the BHS pension scheme.

Liquidator FRP Advisory is thought to be deciding whether to pursue BHS’s former directors over the deal.

It has power to go back three years before the collapse of the chain to investigate transactions that may have left creditors disadvantaged.

Last week, the Mail revealed how FRP had already taken back £35m that Duff & Phelps – accountants working on BHS which have now been sidelined – had handed over to Green.

FRP, along with HMRC and the Insolvency Service, is also likely to go after Chappell and some of his associates.

Olswang has already faced questions about its role in the sale and whether it performed proper due diligence on the buyer, and Grant Thornton was accused by MPs of being ‘preoccupied with how its fees would be paid following the completion of the transaction’.

In a committee hearing this year, Green admitted Chappell was ‘the wrong guy’ to buy BHS. He said he took comfort that Grant Thornton and Olswang were advising Chappell, but later added the firms ‘didn’t know [Chappell] from a hole in the wall’.

The fees of advisers working on the collapse of BHS has already been questioned. The Pension Protection Fund has vetoed an invoice for £4.1m from Duff & Phelps for seven months’ work. It was higher than its original estimate of £3.5m. Duff & Phelps is in talks to settle the dispute.

A spokesman for FRP Advisory said: ‘We will be continuing our process of making recoveries through liquidation on behalf of all creditors and continuing with our statutory duties.’

An Olswang spokesman said: ‘We are unaware of any such claim made by administrators.’ Grant Thornton declined to comment.

‘Chappell – wrong guy to buy BHS’