Vocal Voices

If you owe them £100 million they are yours to play with.

This is how the thief and shark Phil (the spiv) Green is operating with the government and regulators regarding the BHS pension pot.

There is a hole of £571m in the pension scheme, due to Greens dealings, and he is offering a £363m plug.

The man and his wife are reported to be worth £3.8bn.

I would strip him of his title, seize his assets, throw him in jail, and when he was released make him and Mrs G live off an average BHS pension.

Workingman wrote:I would strip him of his title, seize his assets, throw him in jail, and when he was released make him and Mrs G live off an average BHS pension.

That's the kind of action we really need - but never get.

If I understand it correctly, the BHS pensioners won't be that much better off with this £363m contribution, compared to the fall-back emergency pension they would have received via the Pensions Regulator or whatever on the failure of the scheme with the £571m debt.

So it seems the principal winners are the Government. Enough done, therefore, <tongue in cheek> to keep the knighthood .....

TheOstrich wrote:If I understand it correctly, the BHS pensioners won't be that much better off with this £363m contribution, compared to the fall-back emergency pension they would have received via the Pensions Regulator or whatever on the failure of the scheme with the £571m debt.

Most of the things I have seen imply that BHS pensioners will be 'slightly' better off than the Pensions Regulator scheme following Green's 'gift' of £363million. It still leaves a deficit of £208million.

That deficit is wholly down to Green's actions. He is reported to be worth £3.8bn so £0.5bn is pocket money to him.

He should be made to pay every penny back, or charged with fraud.

It is quite interesting that in March 2015 BHS sought to transfer the pension fund to the protected pension fund with a deficit of £207 million. Had that been done Philip Green could then have punted up the £207 Million and everyone would have got their full pension.

In fact it was not done and as a result, just one month later, the pension fund was caught up in £1.3 billion in losses and had reached a deficit of £517 Million.

I'm curious to understand just who decided not to do the transfer in march. Was it the Government? Because had it been transferred in March, it would have been protected from the £1.3bn the company clearly knew was coming up.

In short an attempt was made to protect the pensions and it failed. I, for one, would very dearly love to know exactly why those pensions were not protected and who was responsible for it. Because it could have saved a lot of grief.

If, as I suspect, the pension was blocked by the government, then I clearly understand Philip Green's anger at the self righteous politicians.

I think I'll look for a bit more there and do a bit of digging.

Just to put it in perspective the BA pension scheme was £3.7bn in deficit in 2009, remains £2.8bn in deficit today and will not be resolved until 2027.

Were the BA parent group to go under next week, then there would be £2.8bn of unsubscribed pensions hanging out there. However, because BA is a PLC and not private (Greene brought BHS private after the purchase from the stock market), there is no single "rich man" to lay the blame on.

I must admit I find this attempt to make out that Greene is some kind of monster, doing something nobody else is doing or has ever done, somewhat distasteful. As nothing could be further from the truth.

What is true is that by taking BHS private after purchase, he left himself wide open to this kind of attack. Even after selling it on. Had he just held the shares and put in a board and used the normal share dividend mechanisms, there would have been zero comeback at all.