Sir Philip Green was a perfect gent!

The VERY surprising verdict of pensions boss after dealing with Arcadia tycoon

Under lock and key somewhere in the City offices of Oliver Morley is a very valuable piece of corporate intelligence.

It is the Pension Protection Fund’s watch list of firms that are in intensive care, or liable to go bust, that have sizeable ‘gold-plated’ defined benefit pension schemes. Since the boyish-looking Morley

(pictured) took the reins at the pension bail-out fund in 2018, his life has been dominated by the catastrophe on the High Street as a string of retailers – including Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia – have sought to escape debts and onerous leases by going into a form of administration that can have major consequences for the pension fund.

‘It’s been no secret that retail has been having a difficult time,’ Morley says. ‘We now have quite a deep experience of bringing in a retail insolvency and the way we engage with the various parties.’

But dealing with the shopping chains has been a piece of cake compared with more complex corporate collapses.

When construction services group Carillion went under in January last year, the PPF found itself landed with no less than 13 different schemes, each with different funding gaps.

Suffice to say, as Morley wryly observes, that the richest retirement plans are the ‘separate executive schemes that are very rarely underfunded’.

In other words, the bosses who crashed Carillion not only walked away having extracted untold wealth in pay and bonuses, but had made sure that whatever the fate of the 19,000 or so UK employees, their own pension arrangements would be entirely safe in perpetuity.

FOrtUnAtely, the same outcomes should be avoided at thomas Cook. early analysis by the PPF shows that the 13,500 members of the four defined benefit pension schemes should be fine because they are in the good position of being overfunded by as much as £100m.

the PPF owes its origins to the crisis at Mirror Group newspapers, triggered by the death of the newspaper’s proprietor robert Maxwell in 1991, when hundreds of millions of pounds of retirement savings went missing.

to ensure that there would be no repetition, the Pensions regulator was established with wide-ranging powers. the PPF, funded by levies on defined benefit pension schemes, was created to make certain that in future insolvencies members would be properly looked after.

this huge responsibility now rests with tousle-haired Japanese whisky aficionado Morley, a Cambridge-educated economist who has managed to squeeze a remarkable variety of jobs into his 48 years. And what with work and family, he admits his leisure time is limited.

‘I trail around taking my four children to sport. that’s basically my entire life. lacrosse, football, rugby, often over the same weekend,’ says Morley, whose wife Susan is a teacher.

Since starting out at the global shipping giant Maersk, he moved smoothly into an executive role at multinational mass media group thomson-reuters.

After working on strategy at the treasury, he assumed the job of Keeper of the national Archives at Kew, in south-west london, before heading the motoring agency, the dVlA.

Morley regards the battle over BHS pensions, when former owner Sir Philip Green wrote a personal cheque for £363m to secure the pension funds of workers at his collapsed department store, as a tipping point for the PPF.

He said: ‘there was a narrative before BHS of insolvency being a way to escape obligations in a wider economic context.

‘BHS proved that there is a lot more to be said for having a business which properly supports the obligations to pensioners. It was because it was so high profile and because the Pensions Select Committee were taking a particular interest.’

Far from being critical of Green, the PPF has soothing words for the king of the High Street over his handling of the Arcadia pensioners when the owner of topshop sought a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) in June of this year.

Morley says: ‘He was actually very, very polite. We think the [Arcadia] scheme is in a significantly better place after the CVA than otherwise.’

THe PPF now looks remarkably healthy, with £32bn of assets, which means it has a funding ratio of 118.6pc, something most defined benefit schemes can only dream of.

the money is carefully invested with 60pc in gilt-edged stock and the remaining 40pc in return-seeking assets.

Morley also revealed the PPF is not exposed to toxic fund guru neil Woodford. But the scandal did serve as a warning.

He says: ‘We look for more control, we have liquid investments but we are very conscious to manage these over time.’

retirees who are paid by the PPF have reason to sleep more easily for that.