Philip Green

Sir Philip Nigel Ross Green (born 15 March 1952) is a British businessman who was the chairman of the retail company Arcadia Group.

Green was born on 15 March 1952 in Croydon, England, into a middle-class Jewish family.

He was the son of Simon Green, a successful property developer and electrical goods retailer, and Alma.

He has a sister, Elizabeth, five years his senior.

His family moved to Hampstead Garden Suburb, a middle-class area of North London, and at the age of nine he was sent to the now-closed Jewish boarding school Carmel College in Oxfordshire.

When Green was twelve, his father died of a heart attack, and he inherited the family business.

After leaving boarding school at 15 with no O-levels, Green worked for a shoe importer in East London before travelling to the US, Europe and the Far East.

On his return, aged 21, he set up his first business, importing jeans from the Far East to sell on to London retailers.

In 1979, Green bought up, at low prices, the entire stock of ten designer-label clothes retailers that had gone into receivership.

He then had the newly bought clothes dry cleaned, put on hangers, and wrapped in polythene to make them look new, and bought a shop from which to sell them to the public.

In April 1980, Green registered a philanthropic initiative, the Kahn Charitable Trust, with a vision of "putting lost smiles back on the faces of less privileged persons across the globe."

Green is a supporter of the Fashion Retail Academy and the industry charity Retail Trust.

Green was the chairman and chief executive of Amber Day from 1988 to 1992.

In 1988, he became chairman and Chief Executive of a quoted company called Amber Day, a discount retailer.

The shares performed well, but then suffered a series of profit downgrades and in 1992 he resigned when the company failed to meet its profit forecast.

In 1999, he acquired Sears plc.

He unsuccessfully sought to acquire Marks & Spencer in 1999 and 2004.

At its peak, Green's Arcadia Group owned the clothing retailers Topshop, Topman, Wallis, Evans, Burton, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins and Outfit.

He bought British Home Stores (BHS) for £200 million in 2000, and subsequently spent £840 million to acquire the Arcadia Group in 2002.

Arcadia became a private company and was delisted from the London Stock Exchange.

He owned the high street clothing retailers Topshop, Topman, and Miss Selfridge from 2002 to 2020.

In May 2023, his net worth was estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be £910 million.

Next, Green assisted his wife Tina Green in the purchase of the Arcadia Group, which owns High Street chains such as Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Outfit, Topshop/Topman and Wallis in 2002.

The company was briefly owned by Green but sold to Tina Green within 24 hours, with Philip acting as CEO.

He was reportedly the BBC's first choice to front the UK franchise of The Apprentice; however, at that time in 2004, he was too busy with Arcadia's attempted takeover of Marks & Spencer.

Green was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2006 Birthday Honours.

Green was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours "For services to the Retail Industry".

In May 2007, after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal, Green donated £250,000 as a monetary reward for any useful public information.

He also gave the McCanns the use of his private jet to allow them to fly to Rome for a Papal visit.

BHS was part of Arcadia from 2009 to 2015.

Arcadia had more than 2,500 outlets in the UK, concessions in UK department stores such as Debenhams and Selfridges, and several hundred franchises in other countries.

In 2010, Green donated $465,000 for new beds at the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital, after his wife Tina's mother died there.

He also spent more than $150,000 for an Alexander McQueen dress at Naomi Campbell's Fashion for Relief charity event.

In the same year, Green donated £100,000 to the Evening Standard's Dispossessed Fund which aims to support London's poorest people.

Two weeks prior to the 2010 general election, Green came out in support of David Cameron, George Osborne and the Conservative Party, stating that Cameron and Osborne "understand what needs to be done. They get it."

In August 2010, Green was asked by Cameron, then recently elected as Prime Minister, to carry out a review of UK government spending and procurement.

The business was assisted with a £20,000 loan (equivalent to £216,000 in 2014) backed by his family.

He has been called the "King of the High Street" but has been involved in a number of controversies during his career, including his actions prior to the demise of BHS in 2016.

After high street sales fell in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Arcadia entered administration and ASOS acquired the Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge brands in 2021.

On 30 November 2020, Arcadia Group went into administration after high street sales were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.