BHS administrator receives 'around 50' expressions of interest - source
LONDON (Reuters) - The administrator to BHS, the British department store group that is battling to stay in business, has received "around 50" expressions of interest for all or various parts of the retailer, a source with knowledge of the process said on Thursday.
Although the level of interest sounds encouraging, analysts see little prospect of a buyer emerging for the whole of BHS. They say the most likely scenario is that BHS's assets will be sold off piecemeal.
BHS was placed into administration, a form of creditor protection, by owner Retail Acquisitions on Monday, putting the 88-year-old retailer in danger of disappearing from the high street and placing 11,000 jobs at risk.
Philip Duffy and Benjamin Wiles, managing directors of restructuring firm Duff & Phelps were appointed joint administrators.
Duffy said on Thursday he was continuing to seek the sale of BHS as a going concern.
"We appreciate the hard work of staff that have ensured that stores have continued to trade as normal. Staff have been paid over the course of yesterday and today and we want to reassure them that they will continue to be so whilst the group remains in administration, as a priority payment," he said.
Philip Green, the billionaire retail boss sold BHS to Retail Acquisitions, a collection of little known investors, for a nominal sum of a pound in March last year.
He had bought it for 200 million pounds in 2000 and when it was profitable paid out several hundreds of millions of pounds of dividends to his family.
With a pension deficit of 571 million pounds, the pensions regulator is investigating whether BHS's previous owners sought to avoid their obligations.
British lawmakers in parliament are also investigating. Both the cross-party Work and Pensions Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Committee have launched inquiries.
The BIS committee said on Thursday it will examine the steps taken by Green's Arcadia Group to ensure that Retail Acquisitions was "a responsible owner".
It will also explore what checks were undertaken by Retail Acquisitions to verify that BHS was a going concern.
"The sale and acquisition of BHS raises real questions about whether directors acted in the best long-term interests of the company and their employees," said opposition Labour lawmaker Iain Wright, chairman of the BIS committee.
"Is there too much of an incentive in the system for owners to asset-strip, take out vast sums for personal gain, and then dump and run leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab when the company fails?"
(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Keith Weir)
