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By James Davey
LONDON, November 30 (Reuters) – The “king of the streets” has lost his kingdom.
The collapse of British businessman Philip Green’s Arcadia fashion empire under administration on Monday is expected to bring an inglorious end to a remarkable and controversial career.
With around 13,000 jobs at risk and an estimated 350 million pounds ($ 467 million) hole in the company’s pension fund, the mogul could ultimately end up with another less royal nickname: “The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism “.
For two decades, the 68-year-old dominated the UK retail scene and apparently couldn’t do anything wrong, building a multibillion-pound fortune through a series of acquisitions.
He was knighted by the Queen, celebrated by Prime Ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron, and rubbed shoulders with celebrities like model Kate Moss and actor Sylvester Stallone.
Based in Monaco, home of the super-rich, he has often been photographed by paparazzi on his £ 100million superyacht, Lionheart, and even hired Beyonce to perform at his son’s bar mitzvah bash.
The green was rising high.
He had bought department store chain BHS for £ 200million in 2000, then Arcadia for £ 850million two years later and had made two unsuccessful attempts to buy Marks & Spencer.
Its flagship brand, Topshop, was the go-to destination for teens and affordable fashion enthusiasts. In 2009, he took the brand to the United States, opening a New York department store.
When he sold a 25% stake in Topshop to US private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners in 2012, that brand alone was valued at £ 2 billion, cementing its oft-cited nickname of ‘King of the main Street “.
THE EMPEROR’S CLOTHES UNROLL
There followed a series of business missteps that saw his empire crumble and also undermined the personal reputation of a businessman whose intelligent public image contradicted a more distinguished start in life.
Green went to the exclusive Carmel College boarding school in the south of England, but left at age 16 with no formal qualifications and, supported by a loan from his family, threw himself into the chaos of the rag trade in London.
A brick and mortar retailer, it failed to adapt its brands to fast fashion when competitors emerged.
They were overtaken by new players like Inditex’s Zara, H&M and Primark, while their failure to successfully grow their businesses online saw them overwhelmed by e-commerce specialists like ASOS and Boohoo.
Midas had lost contact. Topshop was no longer cool.
The hammer blow to Green’s reputation came in 2015 when he sold BHS to a collection of little-known investors, including former bankrupt Dominic Chappell, for a symbolic sum of a pound.
A year later, BHS went bankrupt, with 11,000 jobs lost and a £ 571 million hole in its pension fund.
Until then, politicians, the public and the press had often admired Green, even with his extravagant lifestyle.
In 2005, when Arcadia paid Green’s wife, Tina, the group’s ultimate owner, a dividend of £ 1.2 billion – one of the largest in British business history – some decried the payment while others saw it as the fruit of his success.
GREAT BRITAIN TURNS ITS TYCOON
After the collapse of BHS, however, all bets were off.
Lawmakers called him the “unacceptable face of capitalism,” saying its greed and disregard for corporate governance led to the company’s demise.
They called for him to be stripped of his knighthood, while the newspapers vilified him and called him a big cat tycoon.
After the pension regulator sued him, Green wrote a check for £ 363million in 2017 to help fill the hole in the BHS pension fund.
But his reputation was irreparably damaged and even more tarnished when he was appointed to the UK parliament as having taken legal action to try to prevent the publication of allegations of sexual harassment by him against Arcadia staff. He denies the allegations.
Meanwhile, business continued to deteriorate at Arcadia, which owns the Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Burton and Outfit brands, and has more than 500 stores.
A restructuring last year provided only a temporary respite. COVID-19 lockdowns have been the last straw.
The group’s collapse is a blow to Green, who has long boasted of his financial sense.
In an interview with Reuters in 2012, he pulled out a wad of fifty-pound bills from his pants pocket.
“I prefer to talk about things that I understand,” he said. “It’s money.”
($ 1 = 0.7501 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Pravin Char)
