TOPSHOP OWNER ARCADIA GROUP ENTERS ADMINISTRATION
Posted on by Cameron Tewson
Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia group has fallen into administration, putting 13,000 jobs at risk, administrators confirmed on Monday. The retail empire, which includes Topshop and Dorothy Perkins, had been teetering on the edge of collapse since the end of last week.
A statement from administrators Deloitte said: “No redundancies are being announced today as a result of the appointment and stores will continue to trade.
“The Joint Administrators are assessing all options available to the Group. The administrators will be honouring all online orders made over the Black Friday weekend and will continue to be operating all the existing sale channels of the business.”
The group, which runs 444 stores in the UK and 22 overseas, said 9,294 employees are currently on furlough. Ian Grabiner, chief executive of Arcadia, said: “This is an incredibly sad day for all of our colleagues as well as our suppliers and our many other stakeholders.”
He added: “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.”
