Lucky bidders are being offered the chance to sit at Sir Philip Green’s boardroom table as the furnishings of his fashion empire’s headquarters go under the hammer on Thursday.
Black lacquer desks and sideboards and a glass-fronted cocktail cabinet created by Green & Mingarelli Design, the interior design business set up by Tina Green, wife of the entrepreneur who until last year headed the Arcadia group, are part of an auction to raise millions of pounds for creditors of the collapsed company.
The collection, which auctioneers say was built to “superyacht” specifications, includes ornate polished steel table lamps that look like giant sporting trophies and a 2.55-metre glass-topped boardroom table at which Green and his colleagues no-doubt struck many a deal.
The boardroom interior was put together by Monaco-based Tina Green, who was the ultimate owner of the family’s Arcadia Group empire before it collapsed. Her design business boasts that it works on superyachts and private aircraft, such as the couple’s own, as well as apartments and homes.
No minimum price was being put on the items, many of which were specifically made for the Arcadia executive suite, and buyers must organise collection of the furnishings from the offices in Berners Street, just off Oxford Street in London.
The furnishings from the chairman and chief executive’s offices, and the company boardroom, are being sold after hundreds of computers, TVs and items of office furniture went under the hammer on Wednesday and Thursday. Commercial kitchen equipment from the offices is also going on the market via the clearance experts Hilco.
Arcadia Group collapsed into administration in November. The vast majority of its 13,000 staff lost their jobs and its high street stores will not reopen after lockdown. Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge brands were bought by the online specialist Asos and the Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis brands were taken on by Boohoo.
The group had a pension deficit of £510m when it called in administrators and owed creditors £800m, according to a statement of the group’s financial affairs prepared by Arcadia’s board in February.
Administrators have said unsecured creditors were likely to receive only a small portion of the money owed. The Green family’s Aldsworth Equity group, however, was set to receive a £50m payout. The money is owed on an interest-free loan Aldsworth made to the group in 2019 at the time of an emergency restructure.
The pension fund’s trustees have said that they have so far received at least £180m from administrators. The proceeds were understood to stem from the sale of Arcadia’s Topshop brand to Asos by administrators and a number of property sales. The group’s Oxford Street property is still on the market with a price tag of about £400m.
