Sir Philip Green has been a well-recognised name in the world of retail for decades, but in 2020 the business mogul made headlines with the shocking news that his Arcadia Group, which included long-running high street retailer Topshop, had gone into administration.
Now a new BBC documentary, Trouble At Topshop, has taken a look at how the business was run and what lead to its demise.
One name that crops up a lot is Philip Green, a billionaire businessman who was the brains behind Topshop and other retailers in the Arcadia group from 2002 to 2020.
While much of Topshop's success is credited to Jane Sheperdson, the brand's former director who saw its profits soar. She decided to leave the company in 2007 and has said in the documentary that she clashed with Green when he took over.
She said: "It's emotionally draining if you are that charged all the time to be constantly fighting and I just thought 'Oh my God no, I don't want to run this business with you... if you want to run it, then you can have it. You can have it yourself.'"
As the second part of Trouble At Topshop explores what happened to the once-successful retailer in Green's hands, here's who the controversial businessman is and whether he lost his knighthood.
Who is Philip Green?
Sir Philip Green is a British businessman who is best known as the former chair of the retail company the Arcadia Group.
The Arcadia Group was purchased in 2002 for £850milllion by Taveta Investments, the company of Philip's wife Tina Green, and Philip was put in charge of some of the biggest names on the high street.
The multinational retailing company included a number of big British high street retailers, including Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and others.
Philip was born in Croydon in 1952 and was the son of a successful property developer and electrical goods retailer.
After leaving school at 16, he went on to work in the family retail business as well as for a shoe importer, and following this he began to buy and sell fashion himself.
He emerged into the retail business world in the 1980s and by 1988 he had become the chair of discount retailer Amber Day; however, he resigned in 1992 when the company failed to meet its profit forecast.
In 2000, Green bought the British department store chain BHS for £200million.
The businessman was once dubbed King of the High Street, but has been involved in a number of controversies throughout his career that have seen his reputation as a business mogul left in tatters.
Philip Green and the BHS scandal
In 2015 Green received an onslaught of criticism over the collapse of the BHS chain.
As the company struggled financially, Green sold BHS to Dominic Chappell, a former bankrupt businessman with no retail experience, for £1.
A year later the retailer collapsed, with 11,000 job losses and a pension deficit of £571million.
In the meantime, it was revealed in the Pandora Papers that Green and his wife had splashed out on luxury properties as BHS headed for collapse after they sold it, including a £4.95million Mayfair flat in June 2015, a £10.6million Belgravia home in January 2016 and another £15million Mayfair flat in March 2016.
In 2017 Sir Philip agreed a £363million cash settlement with the Pensions Regulator to fill the hole in the BHS pension scheme.
The following year he defended his record on BHS in an interview with The Mail on Sunday and when asked whether any of the fallout was his fault he responded: "No. Zero. Nothing."
Did Philip Green lose his knighthood?
In 2006, Sir Philip Green was made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours "for services to the Retail Industry".
But in 2016 MPs voted to strip Green of his knighthood following the BHS scandal.
However, the move was purely symbolic with the approval of the parliamentary motion carrying no official weight, and Green was able to hold on to his knighthood.
In 2020, calls to remove Green's knighthood intensified following the collapse of his Arcadia Group and a petition calling for his honour to be stripped gained traction, receiving over 250,000 signatures.
The petition alleged that: "Sir Philip Green has mis-managed the Arcadia Group by not providing the resources it requires (both financial or otherwise) to stop the company going in to the brink of financial ruin for years.
"He is responsible for putting peoples livelihoods in jeopardy."
Despite gaining a significant amount of signatures however, the petition was rejected by Parliament who said that they cannot accept petitions asking for people's honours to be taken away.
*Trouble At Topshop airs tonight at 9pm on BBC2