Arcadia saved as Sir Philip Green's landlords cave

Company Voluntary Arrangements that will cut rent and allow store closures approved at the second attempt. Now Sir Philip and his executives have to revive the business

Green’s empire has survived after creditors voted in favour of Company Voluntary Arrangements (Reuters)

So Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia lives on after his second attempt at getting seven company voluntary arrangements (CVAs) approved was successful.

But the landlords have sure sent out a message. Watch out you retailers. If you come brandishing these things because you want rent reductions and store closures we’re going to make it jolly hard for you. We’re not going to just roll over when you threaten to call in the administrators. We’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll make a big song and dance about squeezing you. Then we’ll cave.

Thing is, they didn’t have much of a choice.

He might not be a billionaire any more, at least by the reckoning of The Sunday Times Rich List, but thanks to the money he’s been able to take out of Arcadia and his other retail businesses, Sir Philip still has more than enough in the bank to keep himself and his family in the style to which they have become accustomed.

The yacht, the Monaco pad, their membership to the 0.001 per cent, or whatever it is, their prosperity wasn’t at stake. For the landlords, the equation looked rather different. If Arcadia went down, they knew they’d be left with empty premises to fill at a time when there aren’t many retailers interested in new space.

This is why the property owners who still have Topshops or Burtons or Miss Selfridges or whatever after the store closures approved through the CVAs, a form of insolvency that retailers have for years been using to cut their cost bases, backed them. They will now get some rent as opposed to months of nothing, and a bit more than was on the table during Sir Philip’s first attempt at getting these through. Thousands of jobs have also been saved, which has to be welcomed.

How long that rent and the wages those jobs pay will keep flowing remains to be seen. Sir Philip made his money less as a retailer than as a deal maker. At the height of his powers, he had half the City’s bankers clamouring to do his bidding and he was able to take millions out of the businesses he bought with their help, or at least his wife Tina was. It’s her name on top of Arcadia’s shareholder register. It’s her that’s officially putting £50m into the business and more into the group’s pension funds.

Lately, Sir Philip’s reputation has taken a few knocks. I’m not talking about the non-disclosure agreements and super injunctions that have been generating headlines all over the place. I’m talking about his reputation as a businessman in the wake of the failure of BHS, and now these CVAs.

It is possible to make a success of running a retailer in the current chilly climate. Look at Primark or JD Sports Fashion. Next has found the going bumpier but it’s holding its own, even if most of the action is online.

A time of disruption is when the skills of retail kingpins are tested. Were Sir Philip, or the executives he has hired, as good at retailing as the bosses of those businesses, Arcadia wouldn’t be in the position of going cap in hand to its landlords and other creditors.

Now they need to find an answer to a rather important question: what’s the point of Topshop and the rest. They need to find an answer to it quickly. If they can’t we’ll be back here again.