And I’m going to kick it off with this excerpt from Oliver Shah’s excellent book on Green called Damaged Goods:
“Mr Toad-like in appearance, with a bulging belly and a mischievous grin, Green turned into a business celebrity, often spotted on the front row of fashion shows between Kate Moss and Anna Wintour. Nut-brown from the Riviera sun, his silver hair slicked back into a rat’s tail, he relished the role he had carved out for himself as the retail industry’s roguish uncle.
Bankers from Goldman Sachs and HSBC fell over themselves to offer him money and advice. Simon Cowell and Ronnie Wood attended his parties. He paid his wife almost £2bn of offshore dividends from his high-street empire and made two headline-grabbing hostile takeover attempts for Marks & Spencer. He was knighted by Tony Blair. It all came crashing down in 2016.”

And that is the story I’m going to tell today—Philip Green, the one-time king of the high street. The opulent lifestyle, the aggression, the bullying, the greed—it’s a cracking story. Enjoy.

Philip Green was born in March 1952 in Croydon, South London, into a middle-class Jewish household. Both parents were entrepreneurial—his father owned an electrical goods retailer, while his mother owned a laundrette, a petrol station, and buy-to-let properties.

Tragically, at just 49, his father died. Green was only 12—1964—and his mother, Alma, became a key influential figure in his life, the first of two women who Green adored and listened to.

He left school at 16, got a job at a shoe importer in East London, and while he never showed much ambition or drive at school, it was clear he was determined to make it in business and had a lot of pluck and confidence—as per this quote from a business guy who dealt with him at that time: “He was straight out of school and quite full of himself. He was clearly someone who thought he was going to go a long way, even at that stage.”

He spent a few years learning the rag trade, and then in 1973, at twenty-one, he set up his own business. The following years were really where he hustled—not every venture worked out, but he had a sharp mind, quick wit, enormous self-confidence, a certain charm mixed with a lot of aggression, and a grasp of numbers. He excelled at buying excess stock from bankrupt retail companies and then selling it on to other retailers—risky, scrappy deal-making.

In 1980, to much fanfare and publicity, he opened his own shop in Mayfair, stocking it with designer-label clothes from retailers that had gone into receivership, so the margins were high.

In 1981, he famously launched a celebrity-branded denim venture with actress Joan Collins. While this wasn’t a success, his link with celebrities becomes a constant throughout his life. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the term “star fucker”—it was coined by Rupert Murdoch when he was referring to Peter Mandelson, the British politician, to imply that Mandelson was overly keen on mingling with celebrities and power brokers—how relevant that is now when we look at the trouble Mandelson is currently in over his association with Jeffrey Epstein. Anyway, it’s fair to say that Green was a star fucker—he craved the pixie dust they sprinkle.

His big break came in 1985 with two deals. First, he bought a bankrupt retailer, Bonanza Jeans, for about £1 million. They had a huge inventory that their bank had undervalued, so Green sold the inventory, and within a month he was able to pay back the bank—basically getting the retail stores for nothing. Then he merged that with another distressed retailer called Jean Jeanie, which he paid £65,000 for an option to buy, and then negotiated with the wholesalers and manufacturers to bring costs down.

Now, “negotiate” might be a nice way of putting it, because Green is noted for his bullying, prone to shouting, cursing, and threats of physical abuse—a style he picked up from associating with known gangsters, one in particular being Anthony “Tony” Schneider, a West End London loan shark who apparently punched Green and knocked him down after they fell out.

Anyway, Green turned the business around and then sold it to Lee Cooper, the jeans company, for somewhere between £3 million and £7 million—it’s hard to get a definitive answer.

So this was 1986. Green was 34, still slim at this stage, and sporting a Spandau Ballet hairstyle, and the press, who he assiduously courted even then, called him the Jean Genius.

Because he was such a wheeler-dealer, it’s hard to know how wealthy he was by this stage, but here’s an account of his lifestyle, again from Oliver Shah’s excellent book, and this is from one of his business partners:
“After a brutal 12-hour day, he would be chauffeur-driven to the Ritz casino in his Bentley. We’d have dinner there and he would gamble on the tables. He had power, and all the girls would be impressed. There’d be loads of champagne, caviar, free food—whatever he wanted. When he won, he won loads. When he lost, he lost loads. He’d thump the table and everybody would be watching.”

Then, in 1988, he invested most of his Lee Cooper money—and millions more that he raised from friends and business associates—in Amber Day, a struggling publicly traded retail group, of which he became CEO.

So remember, this is a public company, and Green is not your typical public company CEO, but by moving manufacturing to Hong Kong for cheaper supplies, combined with his instinctive retail knowledge, the company’s profits went from £3 million to £10 million, and so initially his barrow-boy trading style went down well with the City, and the share price more than doubled.

But running a public company requires transparency, and transparency and Green don’t go well together. He went through five different firms of stockbrokers in four years, so this made the City very uneasy.

And then, in the early ’90s, there’s a recession in the UK—sales crashed brutally. The company missed an earnings forecast, and the stock plummeted.

Then there was an investigation into some shady share buying, and while no charges came out of that, it did reveal Green’s connections to some pretty unsavoury characters—a convicted fraudster, as well as the loan shark I already mentioned, Anthony “Tony” Schneider—because he was one of the investors in Amber Day.

And so, as a result of all of this, Green was ousted, and this resulted in two things: first, it left Green with a big chip on his shoulder, a resentment towards the City, the investment community, which he saw as being full of posh boys who were prejudiced against him.

And it also turned Green off public companies—he pledged never to run a public company again.

Now, I mentioned that his mother was the first of two influential women who Green adored and listened to, and the second one is Tina Palos, who he married in 1990. She owned a boutique in London with her first husband, so she was familiar with the retail business and plays a central role in Green's life from here on in. And whatever else I think about Green, he appears to be totally devoted to his wife—they would have two children.

After the Amber Day humiliation, Green went back to what he knew—wheeling and dealing, but on a much bigger scale. First, he bought Olympus, a large high street sports retailer that was being hugely mismanaged by Sears—not the US Sears, this was a UK retail and financial services company. They were so desperate to offload it that Green was able to buy it for just £1 plus the inherited debt, about £20 million, and he turned it around and within three years sold it for £330 million and netted about £45 million.

Next, he bought Sears itself for £548 million, with backers including the reclusive billionaire Barclay twins—fascinating characters who I will cover. Green realised that the inventory and buildings of Sears were worth more than the company itself. He simply acted as the liquidator—a classic example of “buy low, break up, and sell high.” And within six months, he and his fellow investors made a £280 million profit.

So now flush with cash, emboldened by his success, and with some heavy hitters willing to fund him, including the big banks lining up, he started laying the groundwork to buy one of the UK’s most treasured retailers—Marks & Spencer, or M&S as everyone calls it.

But reports surfaced that his wife had bought about £25 million worth of M&S stock only days before Green's intentions would become public. The British press had a field day over this, his banking advisers took fright, and Green had to back off—not before calling his banking advisers “double-barrelled c***s,” again referring to the so-called posh boys in the City with hyphenated names.

By this stage, Green and his family had moved to Monaco, where he and his family continue to reside tax-free.

Now you might be asking, how is Green able to swoop in and extract such value from these retailers? Well, for context: at the time, much of Britain’s traditional high street was struggling—changing consumer habits, rising competition from supermarkets and discount chains, and years of underinvestment had left even major retailers undervalued. They were land-rich but cash-poor, and so they were vulnerable to takeovers.

And Green, with his now very much enhanced reputation and big backers, was ideally placed.

And so it was in May 2000 that he swooped again, buying British Home Stores—BHS—for £200 million. This was founded in 1928, had 156 outlets, and sold everything from electronics and furniture to perfume and groceries at discount prices. But it was floundering.

For the next 18 months, he worked 15-hour days redesigning the stores. He tore through the inventory, forced out slow-moving stock, and went back to suppliers demanding deeper discounts.

It worked, in the short term. Profitability improved. Two years after the purchase, BHS was valued at £1.6 billion, and between 2002 and 2004—but what really made the headlines wasn’t so much the turnaround, it was the huge dividends Green took out—£422 million in the first two years, nearly double the company’s actual profits during that time—a pattern that we’ll see repeats itself as Green moved on to his next big deal.

This came in 2002, when he bought Arcadia for £850 million, putting only about £10 million in personally, the rest borrowed. As a result of the deal, his wife Tina held 92% of the company. At the time, Arcadia was a company that had revenue of £2.3 billion from 2,400 outlets but was struggling to increase margins. But it had some great brands like Topshop, Topman, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, and Wallis under one roof. Green immediately sold off the weaker brands.

And he turned it round into a roaring success—at least initially.

From Fortune magazine: Green astounded the City—London's financial district—with the speed at which he turned BHS and Arcadia around and paid back much of the debt he used to take them private. He did it so effortlessly that the cry went up that he'd “stolen” the franchises for much less than their worth.

And the magazine went on to describe Green’s retail expertise:
“Green attributes his success not to cheap acquisitions but to a lifetime of plying the rag trade. He can price a fabric simply by rubbing it between his fingers. He can look at a rack of coats and predict which ones won't sell next season. He obsesses with presentation, from the floor plans to the lighting. In short, he's a store manager's worst nightmare.”

And he was a nightmare to work for. Former Topshop employees described toxic workplace encounters with Green—here’s an example of him berating a female employee:
“You’re absolutely f****** useless. I should throw you out of the window, but you’re so fat you’d probably bounce back in again.” Now it should be noted that by this stage, Green was no slim jim himself.

By now, Green’s public profile was sky high—the press were calling him the king of the high street, and he and his wife were spending extravagantly. For example, his 50th birthday party in 2002 cost £5 million. He chartered a private jet to fly 200 guests to a five-star hotel in Cyprus, where the performers included Tom Jones, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Rod Stewart.

And to give you an idea of the type of partying Green and Tina enjoyed, the following is again from Oliver Shah’s book, where he writes about the atmosphere in the plane before taking off:
There was a heavy-handed joke about cocaine. A polite voice told guests: “I would like to introduce you to the captain.” An image of a boggle-eyed pilot appeared on the screen. “His name is Charles... Some of you may have been this high with Charlie before, but for others it’s a new experience.” There was applause and laughter.

Then in 2004, Green again went after Marks & Spencer, and this turned into a very public and bruising spat.

So Green realised to get M&S, he needed a CEO that would be respected by the City. The top retail guy at that time was Stuart Rose, a suave, urbane figure well respected by the City. He had run Arcadia before Green bought it and made £25 million from the sale. Green offered Rose the top job if his bid for M&S was successful. Rose declined—he knew what Green was like and didn’t fancy becoming his gofer.

Then the M&S board moved fast—they sacked their CEO and brought in Rose as the CEO. Literally overnight, Rose went from being Green’s potential ally into his primary obstacle.

And so began what the press called a “dirty war.” Allegations surfaced that Rose’s phone records and bank statements had been intercepted. Green’s advisers at Goldman Sachs were accused of running a smear operation. Green’s camp fired back, accusing M&S of encouraging Rose to mislead Green during their initial meeting. In July 2004, M&S rejected Green’s final offer of £9.1 billion.

Green was furious, and there was a famous public bust-up with Stuart Rose. One British newspaper ran with the headline: M&S fight turns into a punch-up.

The story goes that Green was in his limo and spotted Rose going into the M&S headquarters—sounds to me like he was lying in wait for him—and this is from the newspaper that reported on it:
“Green is said to have grabbed Rose by the lapels and yelled: ‘Oi! I want a word with you.’ Green, famous for his volcanic temper, then reportedly said: ‘I thought you wanted to be rich. You could have made £250 million with me.’ Rose replied: ‘I didn’t want money, I just wanted the M&S job.’ Worried staff who witnessed the row were ready to call security, but then the two men suddenly realised they were on the edge of a serious flare-up and started laughing. They parted in good humour.” Brilliant.

Anyway, I wouldn’t feel too bad for Green, because in October 2005, Arcadia paid a dividend of £1.2 billion to Tina Green in Monaco—so no tax on it—the largest single payout in British corporate history. To fund it, Arcadia borrowed £1 billion in senior bank debt. The dividend was more than four times Arcadia’s pre-tax profit that year. The company was borrowing money and passing it directly to its owner.

It made huge headlines—critics were rightly saying that he was loading Arcadia with debt, and as a result, it would struggle if retail conditions turned against it. They were right, though it would take another decade for that to come to fruition.

But for now, and we’re in 2006, things were looking rosy for Green. That year, he was knighted, becoming Sir Philip Green—a recognition that Topshop had, under his ownership, become a genuinely significant cultural force.

Central to that status was his and Tina's understanding that blending celebrity with business was a powerful way of burnishing their credentials. Green associated himself with a who’s who of big names of the noughties. In 2005, Beyoncé performed at his son’s bar mitzvah—total cost £4 million.

But no relationship defined this era more than his partnership with Kate Moss. She was his muse—the embodiment of what Topshop was trying to be. Moss was brought on to design collections for the brand. When the first collection went on sale at the Oxford Circus flagship in spring 2007, the queues stretched around the block.

At that moment, the height of his power, Green's family wealth was estimated at just under £5 billion.

And because he was so visible—always at parties, always hanging out with celebrities—he featured a lot in the press, and he was very keen to try and control the press narrative around him. And I already mentioned how he treated staff—well, the press didn’t fare much better.

Here’s one from a journalist who writes about his phone call from Green:
“You fcking onion, don’t you f*ing get it?”
It could only be Sir Philip Green on the phone. The negative piece the Evening Standard had written on his Arcadia retail empire had ticked him off royally, and as was his wont, he was straight on the phone to bark what he thought of it.
You always knew such barrackings were coming, and when they did, you also knew his initial burst of fury—usually with the funniest concoctions of abuse and faux threats of violence—would eventually give way to a joke, a gossip, and the invitation to a cup of tea.

So there was a certain charm there, I guess, and maybe some journalists did get an invite to have a cup of tea, but not all of them, and I know his staff never saw the funny side of his behaviour. And I think it’s important to call him out on this—I already mentioned the way he treated staff, and there weren’t just one or two occasions, it happened all the time. Here’s a quote from a manager:
“You don’t want to sit in meetings with young buyers, some of whom are inexperienced, and see them demolished and sworn at. You would see young women, particularly, reduced to tears. Philip would often have a meeting before he flew off in his jet to Monaco, and he would pick on one person and just batter them.”

In 2009, Topshop opened its first American flagship on Broadway in Manhattan to huge fanfare. But the timing was difficult—you had the global financial crisis. Also, US consumers found the quality didn’t always match the price tag, especially when Zara was offering higher quality and H&M was significantly cheaper.

And this is when I think Green either took his eye off the ball, or just didn’t have the wherewithal to move with the times, or maybe he was taking too many flights with Charlie—who knows.

The criticism is that he became more distanced from high street trends. He never really bought into online shopping. He famously lived off his Nokia brick phone, never got a smartphone, so really sort of insulated himself from all the changing winds that were happening in retail.

Fast-fashion chains like Primark, Zara, H&M—they were able to switch their ranges in a heartbeat and were beating Green’s outlets.

Not that you’d think it, as Green continued to splash the cash—spending over £6 million on his 60th birthday in 2012, held over four days in Cancun. The guests included Naomi Campbell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Hudson. Robbie Williams, Stevie Wonder, and CeeLo Green performed, and the Beach Boys sang at an outdoor barbecue.

By 2015, the wheels were coming off. BHS reported a pre-tax loss of £21 million—and this was no one-off. The company had been haemorrhaging money for years, and crucially it had a pension deficit of £571 million—almost exactly equal to the £586 million in dividends Green had taken out of the business over the years. On top of that, the company owed a further £250 million in debt.

Green needed out. And in his desperation to get out, he made a decision that would define his legacy.

He sold BHS for £1 to a guy called Dominic Chappell—a three-times bankrupt with zero retail experience. Just 13 months later, BHS collapsed. Eleven thousand jobs were gone. And in those 13 months, Chappell had taken £17 million from the business, including a £1.5 million loan used to pay off the mortgage on his parents' home. He was subsequently jailed in 2020 for six years for tax evasion.

The £1 sale had not been a genuine rescue attempt. It was Green just offloading a liability and not giving a damn about the business, the employees, and their pensions.

And just as BHS went bust, the press found out that at that very moment, Lady Green had spent £38 million on luxury homes through offshore companies.

The public outcry was enormous. Politicians came for him. And in June 2016, Green was summoned before a joint parliamentary committee for a session that lasted over six hours.

It did not go well. At one point, Green turned to one of the MPs and said: “Stop staring at me. It’s making me uncomfortable.” That line became the media shorthand for the whole sorry day—a billionaire, in parliament, telling an elected representative to look away. Nothing to see here.

On the pension deficit, he offered a kind of confession: “It’s my fault. The answer is: it wasn’t dealt with. We’re here, and we have to find a solution. It’s not my style to blame anybody else.” He then proceeded to blame all sorts of people. This from a man who, by his own telling, was such a micro-manager that when he took over BHS, he claimed to have saved £600,000 simply by ordering new coat hangers.

He was branded “the unacceptable face of capitalism.”

It didn’t help that, in the middle of all this, he took delivery of a new £100 million superyacht, Lionheart.

As one prominent businessman said: “It’s really the character of Philip Green that makes it so completely interesting. He is the most vain man, and pugnacious—and it’s just interesting to find him on the ropes for a bit. If you’re consistently flashy, consistently rude, and very rich, you can’t then be surprised if nobody likes you.”

The politicians were threatening to remove his knighthood. The press, which had once called him King of the High Street, now had a new name for him: Sir Shifty.

And so eventually, after much stalling and toing and froing, in 2017, Green agreed to pay £363 million into the BHS pension scheme.

Then a second crisis arrived.

In July 2018, the Daily Telegraph published an investigation alleging that several members of staff had been paid significant settlements and had signed NDAs to prevent them speaking publicly about allegations of sexual harassment and racial abuse. Green denied everything, and because the NDAs held, nothing could be proven—at least not legally.

But the damage to his reputation was real, and his business reputation continued to take a hammering because Arcadia was fading. Green had starved the business of investment in digital and online retail for years, and it showed. By 2018, the company was reporting losses of £177 million and sitting on another huge pension deficit.

Then came COVID. Arcadia's 444 stores closed overnight. Unlike rivals ASOS and Boohoo, which had strong online presences, Arcadia had nothing to fall back on.

In November 2020, Arcadia went into administration, and the brands like Topshop and Dorothy Perkins were snapped up by online rivals.

Green now lives aboard his £100 million superyacht, Lionheart.

So yeah, he still has his money—although his fortune is now put at just £1 billion—but he’s lost so much. His reputation as the king of the high street, the guy who just had an innate feeling for how the fashion business worked—that’s gone. And on top of this, he’s rightly viewed as a greedy bully. That’s not a great legacy, but I have zero sympathy for bosses who get off on reducing employees to tears, so you reap what you sow—a bit of karma, and it makes for a fascinating story.

And that brings us to listeners' emails, and this one is from John, who would love to hear the story of Sam Altman. Believe it or not, I didn’t have this on my list. I’d really like to dig into this, so I might do this one sooner rather than later. Thanks so much for listening, John, and for the recommendation.

And remember, if you have any comments, any corrections, or any story that you’d like me to cover, email me at: info@gbspod.com.

All the best, folks.