BHS goes into administration

Efforts to rescue the heavily indebted chain have failed and the 88-year-old company is calling in administrators to find potential buyers.

BHS was bought last year by a consortium called Retail Acquisitions for £1 from retail entrepreneur Sir Philip Green, but the extra funding needed to turn it around has not materialised.

It has debts of more than £1.3bn, including a pension fund deficit of £571m.

Sir Philip bought BHS for £200m in 2000. Rival retailer Sports Direct is understood to want some of BHS’s 164 stores, but will only buy them if it does not have to take on any pension liabilities.

Shopworkers’ trade union Usdaw said it was “seeking urgent clarification from the company”.

Woolworths

The collapse of BHS is the biggest retail failure since Woolworths folded in 2008 with the loss of almost 30,000 jobs.

Retail experts said BHS has suffered from years of under-investment, leaving its range and shops looking old-fashioned.

Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital, said: “BHS may have been another Woolworths that struggled to adapt to the new retail world. But the same pressures that squeezed the life out of BHS are being felt across the UK retail sector today.”

The owner of BHS, Dominic Chappell, said “no one is to blame” for the retailer’s collapse, adding: “It was a combination of bad trading and not being able to raise enough money from the property portfolio.”

Mr Chappell said BHS would continue to work with the administrators Duff & Phelps to “find a solution post the administration”.