As life at BHS comes to an end for 11,000 frequently overlooked staff, who are now facing a future without a job or a fully funded pension scheme, attention remains on the men who owned the department store chain – plus those who profited as it collapsed.
Guy and Alexander Dellal, the father and son behind the property company that helped to bankroll Dominic Chappell’s takeover of BHS last year (and made a quick £5m from a related property deal), are due to appear in front of MPs investigating the scandal on Tuesday, to be followed on Wednesday by Chappell (plus directors of his consortium and BHS management).
No doubt someone will claim BHS’s demise could not have been foreseen, although that is unlikely to be Neil Bennett, the mouthpiece of former BHS owner Sir Philip Green. In 2002, when he was at the Sunday Telegraph, Bennett interviewed Green two years after he’d acquired the stores. “Being a billionaire is surely all about private jets and sumptuous yachts, about a long, languid tour of the world’s most beautiful tropical beaches,” Bennett mused. “For Philip Green, however, it is about ladieswear and merchandising, supply chains and sales per square foot. It is about 18-hour days, tortuous negotiations and endless cigarettes. Above all it is about loving an 80-year-old store chain called BHS to death.”
The man is a prophet.
Ashley has got news for MPs: he’s not turning up
When you’re expected on a panel, but fail to show up, it can prove disastrous. Just ask Roy Hattersley about Have I Got News For You.
So on Tuesday, when the business, innovation and skills committee kicks off its investigation into the working practices of Sports Direct, one wonders what might be posited in the slot reserved for the group’s founder Mike Ashley, who doesn’t plan to be there.
You’ll recall that Ashley has form in this regard, having ducked a Scottish affairs committee last year by sending his clueless chairman, Keith Hellawell. Then, after repeatedly refusing invitations from committee chairman Iain Wright to give his side of an ongoing controversy about how the retailer treats its workers, Ashley received a summons. Having suggested he might then show up – but only on the ridiculous condition that MPs took a tour of his HQ first – Ashley declined.
Hattersley, of course, cancelled three times – and always at the last minute – but was replaced by a tub of lard. In Ashley’s corner we get representatives from the employment agencies who supply the retailer’s warehouse staff. Courageously, the 55% owner of Sports Direct has encouraged them to attend.
Sorrell could duck the pay question
All of which means it is a good week to have the WPP annual general meeting, at least if your name is Sir Martin Sorrell.
Events in parliament will ensure that, no matter how bad the protest gets over the size of the pay packet awarded to the advertising group’s founder, Sorrell will be well down the list of the week’s most hated businessmen.
That is quite an achievement as the diminutive tycoon likes his rewards to come in inverse proportion to his physique (he stands five feet six and a half inches tall, which conveniently allows him to compare himself to Napoleon). Set that against the great man trousering some £70.4m in 2015 – 196 times the average WPP employee – and including variable pay that was 58 times his base salary of £1.2m. Investor group Pirc reckons that sum has “far exceeded an acceptable ratio of 200% of salary”. You’ll therefore be amazed to learn that Pirc is recommending investors vote against WPP’s pay report this week.
Meanwhile, as the City’s trickiest pub question remains: “Name a WPP director apart from Sorrell”. Pirc is doing its bit to raise the profile of the rest, by advising a vote against the re-election of the chairman. That’s Roberto Quarta, if you’re interested.
