After a difficult past few weeks for the ex-boss of collapsed high-street retail chain, BHS, Louise Fernley looks at how Sir Philip Green has handled the scandal.
What’s happened?
The saga of Sir Philip Green continued over the weekend, with the Monaco-based tycoon writing to Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, accusing him of turning the recent parliamentary inquiry into the failure of BHS into a ‘kangaroo court’.
Green has come under heavy criticism since a parliamentary report on BHS’s demise claimed Green “systematically extracted hundreds of millions of pounds” from BHS, “paying very little tax and fantastically enriching himself and his family, leaving the company and its pension fund weakened to the point of the inevitable collapse of both”.
Frank Field, who led the parliamentary inquiry into the fall of BHS, added fuel to the fire in an interview in Saturday’s Times newspaper, asking “why the hell doesn’t he just sign the cheque?”
Green has not taken the accusations lying down – save when he has been sunbathing on the deck of his yacht this week – responding in a letter to Field: “If you continue to seek to usurp the Pension Regulator’s role and hurl daily abuse at us, any failure to arrive at a pensions settlement will be solely down to you and the blame will lie at your door.”
Why’s it important?
BHS was once a stalwart of the British high street but were we surprised by its breakdown, given its sagging shops, tired trading and dismal figures? No, of course we weren’t. Against its competitors, John Lewis, M&S and Debenhams, who have modernised to keep up with changing consumer habits, BHS lagged well behind. The real story, however, is not the end of BHS, but how culpable the somewhat infamous figure of Green is for the 11,000 jobs at risk and £571million deficit in the group’s pensions fund.
What’s the reaction been?
It’s been some time since the media have had such a rich (figuratively and yes, quite literally) corporate villain to profile. Akin to Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin of the retail world, you couldn’t draw ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ better than with a portrait of Green.
Whoever is advising Green on reputation matters in the wake of BHS’s collapse must have had to take a very long lie down in a dark room when photos of a shirtless Green lolling on his Lionheart yacht were splashed across the tabloids, just days after a parliamentary report suggested Green had extracted large sums from BHS, leaving it on “life support”.
Best headline?
What’s next?
If Green is serious about ‘sorting out’ the colossal pensions fund black hole, as he claims to be, and doesn’t want a trial by media, he needs to adapt his bullish behaviour and stop flouting the how-to-look-like-the-acceptable-face-of-capitalism rules.
Post-2008, there are some easy steps you need to follow if you’re very, very rich and don’t want to be criticised in public. Here are the simplest ones:
- Never be pictured holding a glass (let alone a bottle, heaven forbid a Magnum) of champagne. It’s cat nip for sub editors to cobble a quaffing fat cat headline together.
- Same goes for large plates of food. The greedy tag will stick to you like that big rump of steak sticks to your ribs.
- Finally – and bear in mind these are just the quick picture-desk fixes, there are far more rules about equal distribution of wealth, fair treatment of employees and responsible capitalism that I won’t go into here – try to avoid being pictured on a yacht. Especially if it’s your third yacht that you’ve just bought for £100m when you’re being linked to the jeopardised pensions of 20,000 BHS staffers.
