What Will Happen To BHS?

Retailer BHS have gone into administration on Monday but will keep trading until further notice.

19:43 27 April 2016

Retailer BHS brought in administrators on Monday to sell all or part of the firm, leaving 11,000 staff fearing the worst and over 20,000 BHS pensioners anxious about future payments, as the company grapples with £571m in pension debt.

 

According to BHS, administrators have already received more than 30 expressions of interest from potential bidders while business minister Anna Soubry assured employees that the company has no immediate plans for store closures or redundancies. However, business analysts said that buyers are more likely to take parts of the 88-year-old business than save the whole group.

 

Julie Palmer, of business recovery firm Begbies Traynor, said: "What we tend to find in an administration is that people look at it as a distressed company,"

 

"People will look at it and say: 'What are the best bits we can cherrypick here?'"

 

She added that thirty expressions of interest is “not actually a huge amount” and that more than a dozen can turn into firm interest.

 

Meanwhile, Phil Dorrell, the managing partner of Retail Remedy, predicted the BHS name would “disappear” from the High Street if the company were sold off shop by shop.