‘Brash wheeler-dealer’ known for BHS demise
Sir Philip Green who was named in parliament by former Cabinet minister Lord Hain as the businessman in the Daily Telegraph injuction is the king of retail whose reputation was left in tatters by the collapse of BHS.
Brought up in south London, Sir Philip was sent to a private school in Berkshire and went straight into wholesaling shoes and selling jeans. A bold, brash wheeler-dealer, he made his name when buying the Sears empire in the late 1990s. In 2002, he bought Arcadia, the parent company that controls Topshop, Topman, Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge.
Other notable events in his career include a failed £9 billion bid to buy iconic high street chain Marks & Spencer in 2004. Sir Philip was awarded a knighthood in 2006 for services to retail.
But he is perhaps bestknown for his role in the demise of BHS. The collapse of the retailer in April 2016 left 11,000 people out of work and a £571 million black hole in its pensions fund. The tycoon came under fire for taking £400m in dividends from BHS before selling the massively indebted firm for £1 in
2015 to businessman Dominic Chappell, who had no previous retail experience and had been declared bankrupt twice.
Sir Philip was criticised by MPS including Conservative Richard Fuller, who said: “It may be that facing a large and growing pension deficit that the previous owner, when [Chappell’s firm] Retail Acquisitions came knocking on his door to purchase his business, went laughing all the way to the bank.
“But if that sale was done on the understanding that it was avoiding a responsibility for those pension losses, then that £1 he received was equivalent to 30 pieces of silver in his betrayal of the employees and pensioners of BHS.”
In 2017, Sir Philip stumped up £363m to pour into the BHS pension fund.