Topshop’s Philip Green Met His Match With #MeToo
Arcadia Group is teetering on the verge of insolvency in the wake of Britain’s biggest corporate sexual harassment scandal.
Sir Philip Green and Kate Moss attend Topshop’s London Fashion Week show on Sept. 17, 2017.
Photographer: Getty Images
Since June, Sir Philip Green, Britain’s so-called king of retail, has been mostly ensconced on his $100 million yacht, Lionheart, off the coast of Monaco. Apart from a game of pingpong on the deck of his yacht with an unlikely companion—Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo—Green has barely been in the public eye after he staved off the collapse of Arcadia Group Ltd., owner of Topshop, one of the U.K.’s best-known clothing chains. But he’s still in the eye of a storm of criticism over sexual harassment allegations and a management style that allowed his retail empire to spiral to the brink of bankruptcy.
On June 12, Green pushed through a rescue plan for Arcadia by negotiating rent reductions from his landlords while agreeing to shed 1,000 jobs and shut almost 50 of his 566 stores. And a decade after entering the American market with a glitzy New York opening, he called it quits in the U.S., where his Arcadia subsidiary filed for bankruptcy. He closed all 11 Topshop stores in the country.