Philip Green

Sir Philip Nigel Ross Green (born 15 March 1952) is a British billionaire retail entrepreneur renowned for acquiring and managing major high-street chains through aggressive deal-making, most notably controlling the Arcadia Group—encompassing brands like Topshop, Topman, Burton, and Dorothy Perkins—via his wife Tina Green's Taveta Investments from 2002 until the group's administration in 2020.

Green's early career involved importing goods and small-scale ventures before scaling up with acquisitions, including British Home Stores (BHS) in 2000 for £200 million, from which his family extracted hundreds of millions in dividends, loans, and rents over 15 years. He sold BHS in 2015 for £1 to a consortium lacking retail experience, after which it entered administration in 2016, resulting in 11,000 redundancies and a £571 million pension scheme deficit that parliamentary committees attributed to leadership shortcomings and undue personal enrichment at the company's expense.

Arcadia's trajectory mirrored broader retail challenges, collapsing amid the COVID-19 pandemic and online competition, with assets like Topshop sold to ASOS; Green had drawn substantial dividends from the group peaking at £1.2 billion in 2005. His reputation faced further scrutiny from multiple allegations of workplace misconduct, including claims of sexual assault, racial abuse, and bullying leveled by former employees, which prompted investigations, U.S. misdemeanor assault charges in 2019 (later resolved via settlement), and failed attempts to suppress reporting through injunctions. Green has consistently denied the harassment claims, settling several privately.

As of October 2025, Green's fortune, derived primarily from past retail holdings and asset sales, stands at an estimated $1.4 billion.