BHS was debt-free but loss-making, to the tune of a £70m loss in 2013 and with a £100m pension liability.
So you might imagine that there was little – if any – money to be made for him out of the sale of the business.
You’d be wrong.
Sir Philip Green’s family firm has made a cool £70m from the sale of BHS properties, according to a report from the Guardian.
The 12 properties were sold to Retail Acquisitions, the slightly mysterious group of investors who bought the business.
But that £70m isn’t perhaps all it’s cracked up to be, as the Greens bought the BHS properties for £106m in 2001.
Annual rental income from BHS was around £11m.
“The properties were offered back to the company at a price of £70m, which effectively enabled the company to save £9m a year in rent,” Green told the Guardian.
“I think it is a good opportunity for them to start to cut into the losses at the business.”
The properties were sold by Carmen Properties, the Green family’s property firm, based in Jersey, a tax haven.
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