Much of the Green family’s enormous wealth was built up during the early years of Green’s stewardship of BHS.
Umm, Tina had substantial funds already. And it was Arcadia, not BHS, that provided the really big money. It’s true that BHS and Arcadia were contemporaneous but that is a very politician’s phrasing, isn’t it?
And yet there is no evidence whatsoever from this period of the improved turnover, market share, or major increase in investment that might be expected from a leading retailer.
You don’t know how business works, do you Frank?
The decay which set in at individual BHS branches mirrors that of its pension fund – it was allowed to decline from a surplus of £43m in 2000, when Green bought the business, to a £571m deficit last year. Companies that are suppliers to BHS are now also under threat. So the picture that was presented to us in evidence was clear – the Green family’s wealth escalated beyond the dreams of avarice, while the health of BHS and its pension fund was neglected.
And of course low interest rates had nothing to do with that, did it?
“contemporaneous”” what a bollocksy word. How about ‘simultaneous” or even just ‘were owned at the same time’?
Green seems to me to be a spiv. Maybe he’s a crook, but nobody seems to have any evidence of it so I guess he isn’t.
The only thing that gives me any sympathy for him is that so many of his loudest critics are malice-fueled arseholes who seem to understand nothing about business or tax law. Some can barely even count.
I still don’t understand how one person can simultaneously achieve success with Arcadia and failure with BHS.
If the two businesses were completely unrelated (like Richard Branson’s ventures) then I could understand. But Green is a cloth merchant; both groups are clothing shops.
This leads me to believe that he’s not actually a skilled retailer at all; he merely inherited good management at Arcadia. Evidence to the contrary is welcome.
One question I’ve been asked. “Why do all the pictures of him smirking with models involve only sleazy models?”
I thought my questioner might have been jealous.
Dearieme – Disagree. Contemporaneous is a splendid, and necessary word.
“Simultaneous” applies to two or more single events, “contemporaneous” to two or more ongoing processes.
Then the processes were contemporary, not “contemporaneous”. Unless, like many Yanks, you misunderstand what “contemporary” means.
“simultaneous”: happening at the same time
“contemporaneous”: happening in the same time period
“contemporary”: belonging to the same time period
“simultary”: belonging to the same time
I made one of those up. A bit like James Clerk Maxwell, but not very.
As mentioned before, the trick with BHS was to sell off its property portfolio to Mrs Green. The money received by BHS was immediately paid out as a special dividend to Mr and Mrs Green. BHS now had the problem of paying rent to Mrs Green significantly impacting its cash flow. She meanwhile received rent and dividends in tax free Monaco. That is the source for the yachts and the source of BHS cash flow problem. He is not a great retailer he is and always was an asset stripper.