BHS administrators are yet to take financial control

BHS administrators are yet to take financial control of the company from former owner Dominic Chappell.

Chappell, who has extracted millions of pounds from the dying store chain, is due to relinquish control to company administrators Duff & Phelps, after the High Court petition to wind up Retail Acquisitions.

According to the Sunday Times, if the administrators gain control of Retail Acquisitions, they will be able to analyse the flow of cash from BHS to Chappell and his associates. Green was found to have sold BHS with a huge hole in its pension fund, while Chappell was shown to have taken out millions of pounds for personal usage, including purchasing several cars and two yachts.

Duff & Phelps is thought to be querying a sum of 1.5 million pounds used by Retail Acquisitions to pay off the mortgage on the Surrey home owned by Chappell’s parents. Retail Acquisitions took a charge over the house in Sunbury-on-Thames as security for the loan. However, Chappell has since switched the charge to a property in Portugal, potentially putting the Surrey home beyond the reach of the administrators.

Chappell’s consortium borrowed 8.4 million pounds from BHS. Some 6 million pounds is outstanding, although the 2.4 million pounds repaid so far consisted of deductions for management services, rather than cash repayments.

Chappell has missed the most recent quarterly repayment on this loan, allowing Duff & Phelps to argue that the loan is in default. The administrator, working with lawyers at DLA Piper, is due to make its case in court on October 31.

Photo: By Mtaylor848 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons