BHS jobs fears grow amid administration concerns
BHS jobs fears grow amid administration concerns
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BHS could collapse into administration as soon as tomorrow after the ailing high-street stalwart failed to secure a rescue deal.
Some 11,000 jobs are at gunpoint at the shopping center group after question a £60m financing haddest a bearing on investment firm Gordon Brothers failed.
Insolvency practitioner Duff & Phelps is count on have been constant to handle an administration, although a spokesman for the firm said it had not been appointed.
However, a source around BHS said that per the failure of the Gordon Brothers deal, an announcement about administration could come as soon as tomorrow. Mike Ashley's Sports Direct had been in question a last-minute rescue, but the source said that a involve the sportswear tycoon looked unlikely.
The company was today in the midst of last-ditch enjoin avert a collapse.
A failure would the spell the end for a company that started life as a single shop in Brixton, South London, in 1928 and prospective the biggest collapse on British high streets since the demise of sweets-to-dvds retailer Woolworths eight years ago.
Sir Philip Green, who bought BHS in 2000, sold BHS for £1 last year to a far-off consortium called Retail Acquisitions, which has limited experience in the retail sector and is led by Dominic Chappell, a former bankrupt. Sir Philip was reportedly in talks with the five and ten group about supporting the Gordon Brothers deal but the discussions faltered last week, The Sunday Times said.
It is also thought that BHS itself balked at the terms of the deal. It is understood the company would have be destined have paid the fees for the financing up front, and would only have received two-thirds of the funds in the first tranche, both of which were unpalatable.
BHS declined to comment. A spokesman for Duff & Phelps said: “We have not been appointed and fundamentally cannot comment.”
Speculation has been growing about BHS’s future ever since the sale by Sir Philip last year to the group of unknowns. The shopping center business has been loss-making for seven years and its management team, led by leader Darren Topp, have struggled to keep the retailer respecting consumers.
BHS narrowly staved off a collapse a month ago when its creditors approved a Company Voluntary Arrangement, a form of insolvency proceeding under which the retailer’s landlords agreed to slash rents on a host of its 160 stores to help keep the company afloat. BHS’s pension deficit is £571m including the cost of an insurer buying the scheme out. The retailer last month started the process of moving the scheme, which has about 20,000 members, into the Pension Protection Fund, a government-backed lifeboat for the retirements plans of companies that fail.
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