Defiance of a wounded tycoon
TEARS, TIRADES AND TANTRUMS: EXPLOSIVE FIRST INTERVIEW WITH SIR PHILIP GREEN SINCE TOXIC COLLAPSE OF BHS ON BHS PENSIONERS I wrote them a cheque for £363m. I behaved correctly... but I was vilified ON BHS CRASH None of it was my fault. Zero. Nothing ON
IWANT to pull out. I don’t want to do this interview any more. You can stay for lunch, but you are getting me annoyed.’ It’s only 20 minutes into the first interview he has given since the BHS debacle, but Sir Philip Green is already simmering a fraction of a degree below boiling point.
He’s taking exception to being questioned over why, with all his acute business instincts, he sold BHS for £1 to serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell – who drove the business into the ground with the loss of 11,000 jobs – without spotting him as a charlatan.
It’s not the only time the billionaire retailer takes umbrage during the course of an extraordinary, expletive-peppered three-hour lunch. He snarls and splutters with indignation at the way he was branded ‘Sir Shifty’ for his role in one of the biggest business scandals Britain has ever seen.
He protests he has done nothing wrong – and when asked whether
‘Chappell? He’s got more front than Selfridges’
any of the debacle was his fault, his reply is: ‘No. Zero. Nothing.’ He also rages that he is still vilified despite helping BHS pensioners: ‘I wrote a cheque for £363million. But nobody has ever said, “This man behaved like a gentleman, his family behaved properly.”’
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, the tycoon:
Declares that the attacks on him are fuelled by jealousy of his wealth and success;
Defiantly claims that his wife Tina’s £100million yacht is NOT extravagant;
Accuses his arch-enemy, Labour MP Frank Field, of pursuing a personal vendetta against him;
Complains that he has spent up to £35 million on lawyers’ bills in the debacle;
Says that he stopped going out and had to hire a bodyguard for his wife;
Reveals how he had a heart operation just days before a gruelling Commons appearance;
Admits selling BHS to Chappell was the worst mistake of his life.
On the subject of Chappell, can’t Green see why critics think he was over-eager to get rid of BHS, and to distance himself from the obligations to pensioners?’
‘My family lost millions on BHS, so for you to say to me it looks like I wanted to get rid of it… I can see the flavour of where this is heading,’ he bellows.
The legal bill alone, he says, was £35million. How do you spend that much on lawyers? ‘I wish I knew,’ he counters.
A few moments later, relative calm is restored.
Bombastic and combustible, unabashed by his wealth and success, Green makes an easy target for his critics.
The Topshop tycoon became a hate figure when BHS collapsed with a huge black hole in its pension fund in 2016, just a year after he sold it to Chappell.
Billionaire Green and his Monacobased wife Tina – who actually owns the family’s Arcadia retail empire – were lambasted for previously, in 2005, taking a large dividend out of their companies.
The fact that he spent the summer of 2016 bobbing around the Greek islands on his wife’s £100million superyacht, the Lionheart, while BHS pensioners feared for their nest eggs, did nothing to burnish his public image.
But he is indignant because, on the credit side of the balance sheet, he has written a £363 million cheque to BHS pensioners. That’s a contrast, as he correctly points out, with others who have walked away from their obligations. He was recently cleared after an exhaustive investigation by the Insolvency Service into whether he should be banned as a company director.
Green knows he will never win over his harshest critics, including Mr Field, with whom he is enmeshed in a seemingly obsessive feud.
But he feels, having handed over a large sum, he at least deserves some respect for putting his hand in his pocket and the right to get on with his business – and his life.
He was, he says, taken in by Chappell, who presented himself plausibly. ‘I’m not such a smart a*** as you are. But clearly with what subsequently occurred, I and our board were wholly misled by everyone involved with [Chappell]. Was it the worst mistake of my life? Yes, it was. Horrible. Ugly.
‘You’ve got no idea how much front this guy has. More than Selfridges and Harrods put together. Those people who know me know there is no way on this planet this business would have been sold to him if I had even a millionth of a thought process he would do what he did.’
Green is holding court on the sixth-floor of his offices in London’s retail heartland, just off Oxford Street. Tina, he says proudly, was in charge of the interior design, which involves a lot of shiny black surfaces. The next day, she telephoned me to me to say how angry she is that her husband has ‘done the right thing’ but is still portrayed as the bad guy.
With a deep tan offsetting his silver corrugated hair, Green has the air of an impresario. He’s a raconteur, with a sense of comic timing and a strong streak of the showman. He is surrounded by a supporting cast including his finance director, Paul Budge, his in-house lawyer and his PR man.
Long-standing personal assistant Katie, with 18 years service under her belt, is just outside in the wings, ready to play her role. ‘Katie, how many people on a week-to-week basis do I help?’ he demands.
‘It varies but believe me it’s a lot. It’s every kind of charity, and he never puts his name on anything,’ she says loyally.
In pride of place on the cabinet behind him is a magnificent ceremonial sword. It was presented to him by Ian Grabiner, the chief executive of his Arcadia fashion business, to mark his knighthood in 2006 – an honour he was threatened with losing in the furore over BHS.
Is the handle solid gold, I wonder? ‘No!’ he scoffs.
Did he ever think he might lose his knighthood? ‘I’m not going there. Why should I?’
Because it was debated in Parliament. ‘Excuse me, by a complete bunch of old w ***** s.’
It’s a term of abuse of which he is fond, using it six times in the inter-
‘It was my worst ever mistake. Horrible. Ugly’