BHS heading for administration as rescue deal fails

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I think the fundamental difference is Maxwell "borrowed" actual pension fund cash.

SPG appears to have drawn dividends from the company as a director which on the face of it (and with the benefit of hindsight) could have covered a reducing pension pot.

Since the Maxwell events Pension pots are very heavily governed and I get the feeling that due to historically low interest rates the current BHS fund is unable to keep up with the future pension requirements. It doesn't look like it's been "plundered" though.

So on the face of it it doesn't appear anything illegal has been undertaken, but there are certainly some moral and ethical questions.

Does anyone have a better insight than this?

Oh then nothing to do with Govts allowing pension funds contribution holidays in the good times and allowing them to wind up in the bad times.

Makes Green selling BHS for £1 quite a bargain for him.
 
How do they get away with it seems. Some people seem to be above the law....(sorry morals/ethics!)...obviously it is never strictly illegal !!

Nobody should ever be above this or get away with this ignorance is bliss or not my responsibility attitude....never....ever....whoever you are. It is fundamentally wrong regardless of the specifics of the law. The law is often very laggy and not able to cope with these situations.

BHS have been uncompetitive, out of date, out of touch & unfortunately deserve to fail due to this. The market has decided through competition and customers deciding so has corrected itself. This is normal laissez faire economy behaviour which is fine by me. We should reward success.

What I don't agree with & strongly disagree with is rewarding failue & poor performance. Or making people take more responsibility verbally or financially for the I own failings. Philip Green needs to bear some responsibility as it has been failing for some time under his overall watch.

I have no doubt he doesn't care & won't remotely be held accountable for any of his failings. He should be sharing some of the pain but jumped ship before he was left holding the baby.
 
I worked for BhS from 1983-86, in IT.

Pointed out that buyers were changing the selling price of low value items when the cost of doing so (manual stock count in all stores throughout the chain plus changing all the signage) far exceeded the possible income even if every single one sold at the new price. Sometimes they'd do this two or three times for the same item. Told to mind our own business and carry on developing a system to support this practice ...
 
It doesn't, but neither does the fact that still nothing illegal has taken place.

What that article states in short is, Rich man who live in Monaco gets even more Rich and pays next to no tax.

Not new is it.

I never implied he or his wife did anything illegal, so I don't know where you got that from? All I did was point out how Sir Philip operates, so no surprise to me about BHS pension fund or lack of and the calls for a greater top up form the same Sir Philip.

And you are right, he's not the only one playing the tax avoidance game (as we all know) using wife's or whatever means but he's currently the one in the news regarding the BHS sell of and it's staff current position.
 
I do find it strange that vulture capitalists can get away with buying massive companies for pennies, go in and asset strip the best bits then walk off into the sunset and let the tax payer pick up the bill.

There's normally at least one a year that just leaves me scratching my head thinking "how do they do it?"

Isn't that what happened with Rover?

I guess some people are severely lacking in morals in the pursuit of material gain...
 
I find it comical how the media report the sale of BHS to "a former bankrupt".

Lord Sugar has been bankrupt, twice in fact. Yet we don't see the media quoting "Lord Sugar and former double Bankrupt" do we.

Presentation has a lot do with public perception of these cases.

It seems to me BHS didn't change with the times and have died like many other business that didn't change. The nature of capitalism means we need legal business "entities" that once failed, a line is drawn under it and that's it.

Some people win some people lose, the lawyers have a look and see if anything illegal has taken place or if a loop hole has been exploited and needs legislation to close.

It would be a good thing if the Knighthood was revoked though, Green has so much money that money is no longer a penalty. losing a Knighthood is probably more a penalty to hit than paying a fine.
 
I find it comical how the media report the sale of BHS to "a former bankrupt".

Lord Sugar has been bankrupt, twice in fact. Yet we don't see the media quoting "Lord Sugar and former double Bankrupt" do we.

Presentation has a lot do with public perception of these cases.

It seems to me BHS didn't change with the times and have died like many other business that didn't change. The nature of capitalism means we need legal business "entities" that once failed, a line is drawn under it and that's it.

Some people win some people lose, the lawyers have a look and see if anything illegal has taken place or if a loop hole has been exploited and needs legislation to close...

Well said.

Alas, sadly the Voice of Reason rarely prevails.

...It would be a good thing if the Knighthood was revoked though, Green has so much money that money is no longer a penalty. losing a Knighthood is probably more a penalty to hit than paying a fine.

Not sure I agree with that. Knighthoods given to wealthy businessmen and industrialists is always problematic. This issue is not unique to Philip Green. I would argue that it is nigh on impossible to become very wealthy through business without ever setting a foot wrong morally. I personally believe that these knighthoods reflect an idealistic vision of the benovelant Captain of Industry. No doubt some are more honest than others, but ultimately wealthy capitalists make their fortune out of other people's hard work. Nothing wrong with that, all perfectly legal and above board, and it works for the benefit of everyone, the donate to charity, etc etc, but you won't find any Mother Teresas among this crowd. So we knight wealthy businessmen and then shock horror they are suspected of not keeping to highest moral standards, and next we want to withdraw the knighthood... it's a farce.

I say unless he is convicted of an offence, let's leave him alone, and just avoid knighting wealthy businessmen in future - they will have gotten enough of a reward already anyway, let's keep our gestures of appreciation for those individuals who did not benefit financially or personally from their altruistic endeavours.

His knighthood was a mistake, yes, but is our fault, not his.

PS - him acting like an arrogant bar stewart did not help his public image much.
 
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I say unless he is convicted of an offence, let's leave him alone, and just avoid knighting wealthy businessmen in future - they will have gotten enough of a reward already anyway, let's keep our gestures of appreciation for those individuals who did not benefit financially or personally from their altruistic endeavours.

But if the politicians stop giving them knighthoods and peerages then they will stop donating to party funds.
 
The Co I work for took a 10 yr plus "pension holiday" .......

Then closed pension to new joiners, an inferior scheme was launched, (and later still more inferior schemes...)

Then wanted to claw back the shortfall later found, (in bad schemes) by trying to plunder the 'good' part of the scheme. Luckily we blocked this.

They now don't allow pensioners the proper increases via RPI. (Started using CPI as it's cheaper, despite that not being in existence when employees entered into the pension- calls by trustees to restore this have been ignored, as have discretionary increases to pensioners - this is in a very well funded scheme.)

Frankly they are awaiting the last pensioner of that scheme to die as they will get an absolutely massive pot of cash.

Ethics? Morals? - sadly not in big business these days IMHO.
 
I find it comical how the media report the sale of BHS to "a former bankrupt".

Lord Sugar has been bankrupt, twice in fact. Yet we don't see the media quoting "Lord Sugar and former double Bankrupt" do we.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to note this; sometimes perfectly legitimate businesses go bankrupt because of the domino effect of another company going pop and owing ££££'s to others - "lack of working capital" is the usual cry.

It goes on in the building trade quite often.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one to note this; sometimes perfectly legitimate businesses go bankrupt because of the domino effect of another company going pop and owing ££££'s to others - "lack of working capital" is the usual cry.

It goes on in the building trade quite often.
Lack of working capital kills the most profitable businesses. Lots of people simply don't understand this.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one to note this; sometimes perfectly legitimate businesses go bankrupt because of the domino effect of another company going pop and owing ££££'s to others - "lack of working capital" is the usual cry.

It goes on in the building trade quite often.

I've been bankrupt once (2007). I was third in line in what you describe - a domino effect.

I was supplying materials for the 2012 Olympic building back around 2005-6. The main contractor went bust, knocking my customer, who went bust, knocking me for £250K. I lost all the goods I supplied and got no payment. I even had security on the debt against my customer, however this was voided after it turned out Fraud had occurred at company one and my only recourse was to sue. Seeing as I was skint having been knocked that wasn't an option.

I'd had my bank credit check all these people at the time and it was all worthless.

What bothered me at the time was being bundled in with the same people that had simply been on too many holidays, bought too many TV's and couldn't pay their credit card or mortgage debt. I felt (and still do) that there should be categories of bankruptcy so people in the future have some idea if you're simply delinquent or just got plain knocked and taken down by a third party.

I now run a business that offers no credit, you pay, we deliver. I won't get burned again.
 
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while undoubtedly many honest business men go bankrupt through no fault of their own there will be others that "play the system"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/25/dominic-chappell-and-the-bhs-takeover-that-worried-retail-watchers

Interesting read, but the Guardian are becoming like DM....:

"The talks were sufficiently serious for Sutton to have signed a non-disclosure agreement with BHS..."

Err... no. An NDA is the FIRST thing you do before any negotiations start.... I must have signed dozens, some to companies I didn't actually meet with neither before not after.....

But to your point.... It seems that Chappell simply milked BHS to death.... his 'lack of experience' in retail was never the issue.... sadly he was well versed in what he did set out to do with BHS. But was any of it illegal? If not, then should it have been? But can we actually legislate against business owners stripping their own business of cash and assets (ultimately at the employees' expense)?

I guess that - as Red C220 said - it is just one of those things that happen..... nothing to see.... move on.
 
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But to your point.... It seems that Chappell simply milked BHS to death.... his 'lack of experience' in retail was never the issue.... sadly he was well versed in what he did set out to do with BHS. But was any of it illegal? If not, then should it have been? But can we actually legislate against business owners stripping their own business of cash and assets (ultimately at the employees' expense)?

I guess that - as Red C220 said - it is just one of those things that happen..... nothing to see.... move on.

Limited liability is just that. Each time I have a look at something new and I'm terrible for this, after 3 years or so (or once I got something up and running and it's self managing) I get bored with what I'm doing and want to do something else.

The first thing you do is set up a Limited company, if it goes wrong, you don't get burned. I learned that a very expensive way.

What is comical is the way the media describe this practice as some form of accounting witchcraft, when in fact it's just common sense.

Capitalism isn't in itself a particularly great system, but it's a great deal more palatable than the alternatives and it suits our 1st world sensibilities.

It is what it is, you either figure out how it works and capitalise on that (pun intended) or read the Daily Mail and bleat about how unfair it all is.

The people that are really good at playing the capitalism game are currently landing their helicopter on the deck of their megayacht that's moored just outside Monaco Marina, because it's too large to fit in it.

I'm still trying to work out how to get to the next level of this game but that often involves lots of employees and overheads, two things to which I'm naturally averse.
 
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:( - such a shame for the employees. I imagine many are having sleepless nights worrying about paying mortgages, bills, - future employment. It's so sad that this will affect so many (11,000 employees plus knock on to suppliers).

Greed. Pure and simple.
 

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