Sir Philip Green’s sprawling retail empire has collapsed in the worst single corporate failure of the COVID-19 crisis to date, leaving 13,000 jobs hanging in the balance.
Sky News exclusively revealed on Friday how Arcadia Group was on the brink of appointing administrators from Deloitte following the failure of talks over a £30m loan to help offset a coronavirus cash bleed.
Deloitte has said that none of the group’s employees will face immediate redundancy and stores will continue to trade as normal.
The collapse on Monday evening came after Arcadia rejected a £50m loan offer from Frasers’ Group, controlled by Sir Philip’s high street rival Mike Ashley.
Arcadia chief executive Ian Grabiner said: “This is an incredibly sad day for all of our colleagues as well as our suppliers and our many other stakeholders.
“The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic including the forced closure of our stores for prolonged periods has severely impacted on trading across all of our brands.
“Throughout this immensely challenging time our priority has been to protect jobs and preserve the financial stability of the Group in the hope that we could ride out the pandemic and come out fighting on the other side.
“Ultimately, however, in the face of the most difficult trading conditions we have ever experienced, the obstacles we encountered were far too severe.”