£363m for a £571m Pension Deficit ??

What next, Sir Philip?* (*yes he keeps the knighthood)

The tycoon is ‘bored’ with questions about pensions, but £363m BHS deal won’t buy him peace , oh the poor fucker .. he still managed to get away with £208m the little shyster

Emma Matthews was unswayed by the letter she received last week from BHS’s pension trustees. It said they were “very pleased” that Sir Philip Green, the collapsed chain’s former owner, had made “a voluntary personal cash payment”. Almost nine months after promising to “sort” the pension crisis, the swaggering tycoon had agreed to pump up to £363m into a rescue package.

“It’s too little, too late,” insisted Matthews, 49, who spent 14 years as a BHS shop worker. She said she would always remember the tearful goodbyes as she and her colleagues left the Luton branch for the final time last summer. “He didn’t give two hoots about the staff. He never has done — it was all money, it was all what he could get out of the company.”

Evidence unearthed by the parliamentary inquiry suggested Green could have resolved the BHS pension problem in 2014 for £90m, but deemed that to be ‘too expensive’

The billionaire’s belated settlement with the Pensions Regulator did little to ease the anger of the 11,000 BHS staff who lost their jobs last year. As much as he would like to present himself as the saviour of BHS pensions, the deal was struck with the Establishment and the press holding a gun to his head, former staff complained. And critics pointed out that the agreement would disproportionately benefit a small number of senior managers.

But, for 19,000 retirement scheme members, it offers a middle way between the income cuts they would have faced under the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) and the more generous terms of BHS’s original final salary plan. The regulator said that “broadly speaking, on average”, Green’s new fund would give savers 88% of the value of their benefits, versus about 75% in the PPF, the lifeboat for destitute schemes.

The bailout deal, dubbed Project Atlantic, is likely to be enough to allow Green to hang on to his knighthood — for now. However, the Labour MP Frank Field, joint chairman of a parliamentary committee that excoriated him for the “systematic plunder” of BHS last July, said: “Anybody who can’t walk down a street in their own country without bodyguards . . . you have to question whether they ought to have a knighthood.”

BHS’s two retirement funds looked almost certain to enter the PPF when Dominic Chappell, the serial bankrupt who bought the chain from Green for £1, triggered an insolvency process known as a company voluntary arrangement last March. They went into the PPF’s preliminary assessment period, with benefits paid at the lifeboat’s reduced level, but members will now receive backdated payments to make up for their spell in limbo.

The big winners from Green’s bailout will be a small band of people whose pensions exceed the PPF’s annual cap of £33,700. The 10 former senior managers — once Green’s lieutenants — will now receive payouts of £50,000 a year or more.

The big losers will be the former low-paid workers who will be tempted to take out their savings in a lump sum. Those with pension pots of less than £18,000 will have the option to withdraw it all. Green stands to recoup up to £15m if, as expected, 90% of the 9,000 who are eligible take up the offer. Their departure will reduce the new fund’s long-term liabilities.

Based on lump-sum rates offered by the old BHS scheme, the pensions consultant John Ralfe estimated that those who take the money will be 10% worse off on average than if they had entered the PPF and taken out their savings gradually.

Ralfe said: “The savings from short-changing these 9,000 people will be refunded to Green under a clawback mechanism. He should turn down any refund to make sure these people do not lose out even further.”

The gap between the value of Green’s bailout and the total BHS pension deficit of £571m will be bridged largely through less generous inflation-linking.

Some commentators applauded the BHS deal as a landmark in pensions regulation. But another consultant described it as a “one-off” that was possible only because of Green’s poor judgment.

He said the tycoon’s decision to sell BHS to Chappell in March 2015 — a murky transaction indirectly financed by Green’s Arcadia Group — allowed the regulator to build a case around an attempt to avoid liability. The affair would set no legal precedent, he added, because it had never reached court.

Green, 64, settled after the regulator threatened to sue him, amid press outrage that saw him branded Sir Shifty. His Monaco-based wife, Tina, at one point texted a friend to say the scandal had been “devastating” for her family. Evidence unearthed by the parliamentary inquiry suggested Green could have resolved the BHS pension problem in 2014 for £90m, but deemed that to be “too expensive”.

His ego, and not wanting to be seen with a bust company, has cost him plentyAnonymous consultant

“His ego, and not wanting to be seen with a bust company, has cost him plenty,” said the consultant, speaking anonymously. “I do believe ego and reputational factors are part of that £363m.”

Green’s settlement severs his ties to the BHS pension fund, which will go forward without a sponsor. Chris Martin, who was criticised for not standing up to the tycoon properly as chairman of the old scheme, will be one of the trustees.

It is not clear how Green channelled the payment from his estimated £3.2bn fortune to the regulator’s account, although it is not thought to have gone through Arcadia. Even after handing over up to £363m, he is likely to be in profit from his ownership of BHS, which he bought for £200m in 2000 using debt. Green took out more than £800m from the company in dividends, service charges and rent payments for some BHS properties owned by his family. He also wrote off £215m of inter-company loans, however.

In his words, the acquisition of BHS also enabled him to buy Arcadia, which paid his family a record-breaking (and tax-free) dividend of £1.2bn in 2005.

Arcadia, the owner of Topshop, Burton and Wallis, is now the focus of attention. Trading is deteriorating: like-for-like sales fell almost 11% at Topshop over Christmas, and were down 6.5% for the group as a whole. Arcadia is in the process of finalising a triennial revaluation that will put its deficit at about £500m. Green is close to agreeing a “material” increase in the company’s contribution, currently £24.3m a year.

The Pensions Regulator said it would cease action against Taveta, the parent of Arcadia, as part of the BHS settlement. If Green was relieved to see the back of the watchdog, he hid it well last week. “You’ve got to stop being an arsehole, and then maybe I might talk to you,” he told The Sunday Times. “I’m not upbeat, I’m not downbeat — I’m just bored.”

BHS buyer faces £10m bill
Dominic Chappell regained his driving licence last month after a six-month ban, so he can once again choose between a Bentley and a Range Rover for the three-hour commute from his home in Dorset to London.

Chappell, 50, was described as a “manifestly unsuitable” buyer in the parliamentary report on BHS, yet his Retail Acquisitions consortium banked more than £7m from the department store. At least £4m is believed to have flowed to him and his immediate family, including his 79-year-old father, Joe.

The Pensions Regulator is understood to be seeking up to £10m from Chappell and Retail Acquisitions. The watchdog has investigated transactions such as a £1.5m loan from the consortium to a company linked to his father, used to pay off the mortgage on a home in Surrey. It has also looked into thousands of pounds of payments from a company called Capital Management to Paul Sutton, the convicted fraudster who introduced Chappell to the BHS deal.

The regulator said it had halted legal action against Green but would press on with proceedings against Chappell. Retail Acquisitions said it would “robustly” defend itself “because [we] did not cause or add to the pension deficit. That was built up during the previous ownership”.