http://ht.ly/9fil300DTsdThis is a statement of written evidence for parliament into the affairs of BHS. For those who don't know, BHS is a high street retail shop with many branches across the UK. It was owned by Sir Philip Green through complicated structures involving off shore parents, and, ultimately, his wife, who is a citizen of Monaco. Last year it was sold to a company called Retail Acquisitions, for £1. Now it is in administration and its 11,000 employees are at risk of losing their jobs: and they are also likely to lose their pensions, because the pension scheme is in enormous deficit.
The link sets out how this happened. It focuses on the failure of the auditors, which is disgraceful in itself. But to me the truly horrifying thing is the behaviour of Mr and Mrs Green in getting to this position. You should be aware that Mr Green is held up as a retail genius, and widely promoted as one of those big corporate characters we should all respect and rely on for our livelihoods and yadda yadda. What he is, it turns out, is a crook. Surprise, surprise.
As you can see from the link, the Greens took £1.3 billion out of the company, through murky offshore transactions. The sum was paid by one of the companies involved taking out loans, which meant their liabilities exceeded their assets. That company could not thereafter support the BHS pension scheme nor the ongoing business. So they both crashed.
Apparently there is very little prospect of recovering that money so as to secure jobs or pensions. In fact, and this will shock you, pensions will now be reduced and paid by the government guarantee scheme.
We seem to have seen this kind of thing before.....
