The former owner of BHS, Sir Philip Green, has been slammed by MPs who have called for his knighthood to be stripped from him following a new report cataloguing the “litany of failure” that surrounded the sale of the company.
 
The report by the Commons Work and Pensions and Business committee describes how Sir Philip pocketed hundreds of millions of pounds, leaving the chain on “life support” before selling it off to a “wholly unsuitable chancer”.
MPs also criticized his failure to resolve the company’s £571 million pension deficit, which was another factor in the collapse, despite “repeated” requests from the BHS pension trustees to put more money into the fund.

Sir Philip Green bought BHS in May 2000 for £200m and sold it for the same amount to Taveta, a Green family firm in July 2009. Taveta sold it for £1 in March 2015 to Retail Acquisitions Ltd (RAL), owned by Dominic Chappell.
Dave Gill, national officer at the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) trade union, said the report was “damning” on Radio 4’s Today Programme.
 
Administrators for the chain have meanwhile said that 30 stores will shut before the end of July with the loss of 700 jobs. The news comes days after administrators announced a list of the first 20 stores scheduled for closure, including locations in Sheffield, Derby, Milton Keynes, Portsmouth, Bolton Ashford, High Wycombe, Warrington, Newport, Slough, Stirling, Truro, Preston, Stratford-upon-Avon, Yeovil and Crewe – all of which will close down in the coming days.