Billionaire in talks about cutting payments by £25m as part of turnaround plan

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Sir Philip Green is seeking to halve payments into his Topshop fashion empire’s pension fund as part of a financial restructuring plan the billionaire says is needed to save the business from collapse.

The former BHS owner is in talks with the pension regulator and the trustees of his Arcadia group’s pension fund about cutting annual payments into the scheme from £50m to £25m. The pension deficit was £300m in 2017, according to the most recently published figures.

Philip Green's Arcadia turnaround plan could lead to job losses and store closures Read more

A spokesperson for the pension regulator said: “We are in discussions with the trustees of the [Arcadia] pension scheme in our role to protect members.”

Amid falling sales at his fashion empire, which is struggling against online competition from the likes of Asos and Boohoo, Green is desperate to reduce Arcadia’s costs via a company voluntary arrangement, a form of insolvency which has been used by other retailers including New Look, Mothercare and Carpetright to close dozens of stores in the past 18 months.

One source said Green, whose family took a £1.2bn dividend from Arcadia in 2005, has agreed to plough £100m in cash into revamping stores and building his brands, which include Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis.

The investment is dependent on landlords agreeing to rent cuts and the closure of up to 50 of the group’s 570-plus stores, alongside a deal with the pension trustees.

However, landlords are understood to be lukewarm to Arcadia’s plan, given that its parent company Taveta paid £25m to Green’s wife, Tina Green, who is based in the tax haven of Monaco, in relation to loan notes relating to the collapsed department store chain BHS.

The pension negotiations, first reported by Sky News, come just two years after Green agreed to increase annual payments to Arcadia’s pension fund, from £25m to £50m annually, to eliminate the company’s pension deficit.

It had risen to nearly £1bn on the most bearish assessment of the cost of the scheme under an insurance firm buyout, over the next 10 years. Under that deal, payments were set to increase to £54.5m this year.

Accounts published last year showed the deficit in the Arcadia pensions fund had come down from £427m in 2016, on a less bearish accountancy basis, to £300m in 2017, after the company increased its contributions and changed some of the assumptions used to calculate the deficit.

That agreement was struck soon after Green said he would pay £363m to resolve the pension deficit at BHS, which fell into administration in 2016, about a year after it was sold to a group for £1. BHS had a pension deficit of £571m when it failed.

Green’s reputation was shredded by the high-profile collapse of BHS, which led to the loss of 11,000 jobs, including a threat to strip away his knighthood. He faced widespread pressure to bail out the Arcadia and BHS pension funds.

More recently, Green has faced scrutiny over accusations of inappropriate behaviour by former staff members.

The MP Frank Field, the chair of parliament’s work and pensions select committee who led calls for Green to resolve BHS’s pension problems, said: “When things are going well, it seems, the Green family takes mega dividends out of the company; when things are not going well, the workers have to pay.

“The select committee will look carefully at any changes to the Arcadia pension scheme.”