Philip Green takes legal action against watchdog over BHS audit report

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Jun 18, 2018

Retail tycoon Philip Green has challenged the results of a Financial Reporting Council investigation into the audit of BHS prior to its sale for £1.

Green’s company, Taveta Investments has made an urgent application for a judicial review, aimed at forcing the regulator to amend its report, according to Sky News.

Last week, the audit watchdog announced it was fining PwC £10m for its handling of the 2014 audit of BHS and Green’s Taveta Group, and banned partner Steve Denison from performing audit work for 15 years.

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However, the full enforcement report was not included as a result of Taveta’s legal challenge.

Taveta, the parent company on Green’s Arcadia Group, is also thought to have applied separately for an injunction to prevent the Financial Reporting Council from publishing its findings on the billionaire’s empire.

The development will raise questions about the contents of the final report, and PwC’s history with Philip Green and his retail empire.

PwC audited BHS’ accounts in the last full year before it was sold to Retail Acquisitions for £1 in 2015, and signed it off as a going concern. The department store chain collapsed a year later with a pension deficit of £571m and 11,000 job losses.

The investigation into its demise has sparked a variety of reactions from both Philip Green, its former owner, and Dominic Chappell, the last owner of BHS before it went bust.

Chappell and other Retail Acquisitions directors are still embroiled in a series of legal proceedings brought by various bodies, including the Insolvency Service and Pensions Regulator.