Now there’s a £151m pension black hole in rest of his empire

THE black hole in the pension scheme for Sir Philip Green’s retail empire has grown by 50 per cent in the past year, figures show.

The deficit of the Arcadia scheme, which holds the savings of staff at Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Burton, climbed from £100million to £151million.

It gives billionaire Sir Philip a fresh headache as he faces calls to pay millions into the BHS pension fund, which has a black hole of £571million.

He will face questions from MPs on Wednesday about the collapse of BHS and how much he revealed of the scheme’s finances when the business was sold to three-times bankrupt Dominic Chappell.

The BHS scheme held savings of more than 20,000 staff, who face retirement incomes being cut by up to 10 per cent as it is placed in the lifeboat Pension Protection Fund.

However a spokesman for Sir Philip said Retail Acquisitions – Mr Chappell’s firm – was given full details of the BHS pension fund prior to the deal closing in March last year.

There is no indication that the Arcadia pension scheme, which has 25,000 members, will go the same way as the BHS fund. Hundreds of UK pension schemes are in deficit, to a total of £309billion.

Annual reports for Arcadia also show that in the past year the scheme has looked for ways to cut its obligations to savers. It is offering members a payment to move to another type of scheme.

Pension expert John Ralfe said firms did this to reduce the value of their pensions liabilities.

In recent years most company pension deficits have widened as low interest rates reduced the return on investments.

Arcadia said there were no issues with its pension fund.