Sir Philip Green ‘brought down BHS’
MPs told of angry confrontation over ‘theft’ of £1.5m from ailing company’s accounts
SIR PHILIP GREEN was personally blamed for the collapse of British Home Stores yesterday when MPs heard he blocked a “viable” rescue deal for the retailer that could have saved 11,000 jobs.
Dominic Chappell, who bought BHS from Sir Philip for £1, claimed the Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley was “going to save the business” until Sir Philip heard about it and went “absolutely insane”.
After “screaming down the phone” at Mr Chappell about Mr Ashley’s involvement, Sir Philip called in a £35 million loan to BHS, forcing it into administration, a parliamentary committee was told.
On a day of savage allegations about who was to blame for the failure of BHS, Mr Chappell was himself accused of being a “Premier League liar” who threatened to kill BHS’s chief executive for daring to challenge him over a £1.5 million bank transfer.
BHS went into liquidation earlier this month after Retail Acquisitions (RAL), Mr Chappell’s investment company, failed to find a buyer for the loss-making chain.
Sir Philip will be called before MPs next Wednesday to answer questions on his alleged part in the company’s downfall. Although he had ostensibly sold the firm, one MP suggested he was “like Banquo’s ghost” because he was “always there and couldn’t bear to leave [BHS] alone”.
Mr Chappell heaped blame on Sir Philip, saying a large part of the reason for BHS’s collapse was that he broke a verbal promise to arrange insurance to ensure the firm could carry on trading.
“We took him as a man of his word and he did not keep his word,” said Mr Chappell.
He added: “I think our company was saveable and I think, had Sir Philip assisted us, we could have saved BHS. We were in the throes of beginning a turnaround proper and we were moving forward.”
But Mr Chappell was himself accused by former BHS executives of having his “fingers in the till”, with RAL receiving £1.8 million from the sale of BHS and
THE man who bought British Home Stores from Sir Philip Green threatened to kill the high street chain’s chief executive when he dared to challenge him over a £1.5 million bank transfer, MPs were told yesterday.
Dominic Chappell allegedly told BHS chief executive Darren Topp “it’s my business, I can do what I want” after Mr Topp accused him of theft.
In an explosive session of the business and pensions committee, Mr Topp said he knew Mr Chappell had a gun and that he had been in the SAS.
It was just one in an extraordinary series of exchanges in which executives repeatedly blamed each other – as well as Sir Philip – for BHS going to the wall.
‘I know he’s got a gun’
Mr Topp, who stepped up from chief operating officer to chief executive when Mr Chappell’s company Retail Acquisitions Limited (RAL) bought BHS for £1 in May 2015, told MPs he had been alerted to a manual bank transfer of £1.5 million from BHS to BHS Sweden, a separate company.
He said: “My initial reaction was to call the police. I was unaware of this transaction and that’s a substantial amount of money. I rang Dominic and he knew about it straight away and I said to him ‘that’s theft’.
“If I take out all the expletives he ba- sically said, ‘ Do not kick off about this Darren, I’ve had enough of you telling me what to do over the last few months. It’s my business, I can do what I want, and if you kick off about it I’m going to come down there and kill you’.
“Then he threatened to kill me again and I know it sounds silly but apparently he says he was in the helicopter squad of the SAS, I know he’s got a gun. I said to him, ‘If you threaten me again, Dominic, I’ll call the police’. Which he didn’t.” Mr Chappell was not directly asked about the allegation by MPs, but after the hearing he told The Daily Tel
egraph: “[It’s] absolute rubbish. I did not threaten to kill him or have a gun.”
‘A Premier League liar ‘
Michael Hitchcock, BHS’s former finance consultant, described Mr Chappell as “a Premier League liar and a Sunday pub league retailer” who bought BHS “purely for his own benefit”
He said he was “duped” by Mr Chappell, and added: “I question his intelligence, he wasn’t a retailer … there is a big smell test which I adopt in a lot of these situations, and it just did not smell right.” He described him as a “mythomaniac”, or compulsive liar.
Mr Topp said Mr Chappell’s assurances when he bought BHS that he was a turnaround expert unravelled and, “rather than putting money in, he had his fingers in the till”.
He claimed RAL received £1.8 million from the sale of BHS and £7 million from the sale of the retailer’s offices. Mr Hitchcock said he was forced to change the company’s bank mandate to “stop any chance of money flowing outside of the business”. Mr Chappell admitted he had made a profit from BHS, but said he could not say how much, and would have to write to MPs with the amount. “I’ll send you a spreadsheet,” he said.
Mr Chappell, a former bankrupt, denied being a “Walter Mitty character” when the committee said that the description had been used about him.
‘I blame Sir Philip’
Mr Chappell laid the blame for the failure of BHS squarely at the door of Sir Philip Green.
He said Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct owner, was ready to buy the firm and he offered to give Mr Ashley his own shares to push the deal through. He said: “Philip found out about it and went absolutely insane, screaming down the phone, saying he didn’t want to get involved with Mike Ashley.
“That was stopped by Philip. Sports Direct would have given the company the money it needed.” Sir Philip then called in a £35 million loan which effectively meant the end of the road for BHS, which Mr Chappell said needed £120 million of investment to get it back on its feet.
Mr Chappell said: “I think our company was saveable and I think, had Sir Philip had assisted us, we could have saved BHS.” He claimed the position of Arcadia, the company which owned BHS, as a secured creditor was used as a “stick” with which to beat him and, ultimately, it was Sir Philip who took the decision to put BHS into adminis- tration. He accused Sir Philip of having “control issues”, and added that he went from “zero to incredibly angry very quickly” whenever the subject of pensions came up.
Asked whether he thought Sir Philip was a successful retailer, Mr Chappell said he had been very successful at raising “a lot of money from businesses and taking huge sums out of them”.
He talked of taking legal action against Sir Philip because of the sale of a building worth £3.5 million, which he had thought was part of the BHS portfolio but which Sir Philip sold to his son-in-law the day before the sale of BHS. He said that when he tackled Sir Philip about it, the tycoon replied: “That’s showbusiness.”
A yacht in the Bahamas
Mr Topp claimed Mr Chappell was on a yacht in the Bahamas on the day BHS’s administration was announced.
“Frankly, I think it was unacceptable that he was not in the business that day,” he said.
Mr Chappell admitted to being in the Bahamas, but said he was there “trying everything I could to raise money”. He said he was travelling around America, Canada and the Caribbean meeting potential investors.
Richard Fuller MP suggested to him that “a captain should be on the bridge of his ship as it goes down” yet “on the day that people’s livelihoods were on the line, you were in the Bahamas”.