Tesco next down the pan?

[Moderator]

Notice how he's rebranded the overall company as "Fraser" rather than Sports Direct. Bid for respectability?

I just caught the back end of a news snippet - I think Ashley has opened the battle for the brands with a £50m loan for the group.

E.T.A
A linky to Sky News re Ashley’s offer

Worth noting too that Philip Green is not the owner of Arcadia. According to Wikipedia, Arcadia is majority owned by Taveta Investments which in turn is owned by Tina Green, the wife of Sir Philip Green. Phil the Green is the Arcadia group chairman.

Unlikely he’ll be bung a wodge of wonga into the deficient pension fund this time round.

 

[bobthebuilder]

Zara have the advantage as they make as well as sell. A few UK stores might well look at how they're doing the "trend, scale up and target sell" thing you mentioned there and decide the best way to copy it is to become manufacturers themselves.

I predict a few clothing manufacturers will be bought by big stores in the next year as the stores decide the future is vertical.

Zara are a really interesting business (spelling corrected, I’d been discussing Xero on another thread and must be going senile).

They have vertically integrated (apologies for the buzzword) their design, manufacturing and retail operations (and increasingly recycling) using a lot of tech. Thcan make a small run of a product, test it at shows and in a limited number of shops and, if it trends, then rapidly scale production in their factories. They push it into the outlets and channels where it is selling best. The result; they have far fewer flops and less wastage.

It’s a long way from the seasonal collection approach that the likes of M&S still use and / or the outsource to Bangladesh sweat shops approach that East End barrow boy Green uses.

 

[Moderator]

Arcadia... looks about 100% certain to be in administration tomorrow...

Interesting comment from an unnamed 'company insider' (given the BBC’s track record with unnamed sources it is probably somebody that did a bit of seasonal temping in a TopShop branch ten years ago but...)

There had been speculation that Mike Ashley's Frasers Group was offering a £50m loan to Arcadia, but that was dismissed by the Arcadia source.
The company insider told the BBC's business editor Simon Jack: "If this was about £50m we could find that in five minutes."

Now bearing in mind that the business failed to raise £30m to 'tide it over through Christmas’...

Sir Philip had been in talks with potential lenders about borrowing £30m to help the business through Christmas.
However, these talks have failed and administrators could be appointed on Monday, putting 13,000 jobs at risk.

... and thus had no viable alternative to entering administration, is this a case nose sawn off to spite face because it is Ashley stepping forward?



Could be a huge knock effect for struggling Debenhams (also in administration) too:

The imminent collapse of Arcadia could also have implications for Debenhams, scuppering a potential sale of the department store chain to JD Sports.
Arcadia is the biggest concession in Debenhams, accounting for around £75m of sales.

This ain’t gonna end well.

Arcadia: 'No last minute rescue' for Topshop owner

 

[bobthebuilder]

Arcadia... looks about 100% certain to be in administration tomorrow...

Interesting comment from an unnamed 'company insider' (given the BBC’s track record with unnamed sources it is probably somebody that did a bit of seasonal temping in a TopShop branch ten years ago but...)



Now bearing in mind that the business failed to raise £30m to 'tide it over through Christmas’...


... and thus had no viable alternative to entering administration, is this a case nose sawn off to spite face because it is Ashley stepping forward?



Could be a huge knock effect for struggling Debenhams (also in administration) too:



This ain’t gonna end well.

Arcadia: 'No last minute rescue' for Topshop owner

Press reporting £250M of unpaid suppliers; they’ve not been paying their bills. Plus a lot of suppliers with orders manufactured but not delivered. A collapse is going to create a lot of strife in their supply chain.

And a similar hole in their pension fund.

 

[Moderator]

And a similar hole in their pension fund.

BBC has it as an estimated £350m deficit in Arcadia‘s PF.

When BHS collapsed, which Green had sold to Dominic Chappell for a £1 around a year earlier) it had a pension shortfall of around £575m.Green eventually coughed £360m into that fund - I cant see him getting his fingers burned twice on pension deficits.


Perhaps his Monaco resident wife, as the legal owner and only shareholder of Taveta Ltd which owns Taveta Investments which owns 92% of Arcadia Group will be happy to bung a few £millions in to make good the shortfall - pocket change to the Greens of course but then again, she probably won’t.

Married to British retail businessman Sir Philip Green, her second husband, Tina Green owns all of the family shares in Jersey-registered Taveta Investments. As a result, she has been referred to as the wealthiestand second-wealthiest woman in the UK.

 

[Grownup_Rafbrat]

If ever a knighthood needed to be expunged, it's this one.

 

[Provost]

If ever a knighthood needed to be expunged, it's this one.

He's transferred to his wife's name. They can't touch it.

 

[Tool]

He's transferred to his wife's name. They can't touch it.

So how does he transfer his knighthood to his wife?

 

[Ecosse]

Or miss their holiday

View attachment 524307

I'd not be the least surprised to learn this (alleged) 30k bash is them actually flying below their radar tbh.
That's a half pence found at the back of the petty cash tin to him & her.
Don't know what a Super Yacht costs to sail & maintain, but surely it's shed loads per month than a relatively piddling 30k?

 

[Provost]

So how does he transfer his knighthood to his wife?

Gender reassignment for his wife and a good solicitor.

 

[TamH70]

I'd not be the least surprised to learn this (alleged) 30k bash is them actually flying below their radar tbh.
That's a half pence found at the back of the petty cash tin to him & her.
Don't know what a Super Yacht costs to sail & maintain, but surely it's shed loads per month than a relatively piddling 30k?

Where, oh where, oh where is the DGSE when you need them? Maybe someone should tell them that Green is a tree-hugging hippy Greenpeace supporting bastard and they could do us all a favour?

 

[rampant]

Just announced, Arcadia has gone under.

 

[Moderator]

I'd not be the least surprised to learn this (alleged) 30k bash is them actually flying below their radar tbh.
That's a half pence found at the back of the petty cash tin to him & her.
Don't know what a Super Yacht costs to sail & maintain, but surely it's shed loads per month than a relatively piddling 30k?

The £30k is probably the added cost of the owner being aboard. No doubt one Green owned company or another operates the vessel (and its costs) on a day to day basis.

 

[Moderator]

Just announced, Arcadia has gone under.

Or more accurately, 'Just announced, Arcadia has gone in administration'.

It is trading and for the time being, protected from its creditors.

From administration to going under is likely in this case but it is not inevitable... Debenhams is trading in administration (for the second time) and has been for quite some time now (since April I think).

Go Outdoors was bought out of administration by its owner and House of Fraser was bought by Mike Ashley... both are still trading albeit in reduced estates.

 

[rampant]

 

[lokiuk]

Strange that after all the kerfuffle over S660A, the revenue never tried it on over this dividend payment at the time

They went after plenty of smaller fish though

 

[bobthebuilder]

BBC has it as an estimated £350m deficit in Arcadia‘s PF.

When BHS collapsed, which Green had sold to Dominic Chappell for a £1 around a year earlier) it had a pension shortfall of around £575m.Green eventually coughed £360m into that fund - I cant see him getting his fingers burned twice on pension deficits.


Perhaps his Monaco resident wife, as the legal owner and only shareholder of Taveta Ltd which owns Taveta Investments which owns 92% of Arcadia Group will be happy to bung a few £millions in to make good the shortfall - pocket change to the Greens of course but then again, she probably won’t.

I too can’t see him dipping too deep into his pockets (or more accurately, his wife’s purse). I’m also not convinced that he must; he took those big dividends when the business was profitable, at a time when it was also fully funding its pension scheme. It’s not made enough money to do either for a decade or more. Yes there’s a strong moral case that he should stump up the cash, but is it a legal one?

Like so many business stories, there are two sides to this. One perspective is that he’s an asset stripping tax dodging shit who should stump up every penny he took in dividend. The other is that he took on a number of moribund brands and kept them alive for several decades longer than they deserved to be, thereby providing a lot of employment. One thing for sure, none of the blowhards shouting in the press have employed 13000 people for 30 years.

Arcadia is by no means unique in having a hole in its pension position; almost every funded pension in the UK has a hole, including those in the public sector. It’s that he did a Maxwell and robbed the pension fund. Nor is it unique in the way it has separated its fixed assets from its operating business.

BTW I’m not defending Green. I think he’s an odious little East End barrow boy who is long past his sell by date. He’s been completely bypassed by the digital world, both in building his own e-commerce business and in leveraging tech to make the high street business work. He’s also completely missed the ethical supply chain trend. IMHO Arcadia has been slowly dying since the 90s.

 

[Yokel]

I am sure that is a thread about Tescos and that there is a dedicated thread discussing the decline of the High Street and physical retail. On which note, why are the supermarkets allowed to sell pretty much anything whilst dedicated clothing and other retailers have been prohibited from trading?

 

[pc flaps]

Our nearest big shopping centre will be a microcosm of post-Covid retail. There was already a (now disappeared) BHS, and any Arcadia-related store closures will affect a Dorothy Perkins, a Topman & a Burton. Plus there is an on-its-last-legs Debenhams.

Commiserations to all those affected. It's never a good time to lose your job, but pre-Christmas is a particularly sh*tty time for it to happen.

 

[ExREME.TECH]

This internet and online buying thing will never catch on

P Green ('s wife)