page_title: British Home Stores
section_title: Administration and closure
hierarchical_section_title: British Home Stores / History / Administration and closure
caption_attribution_description: English: British Home Stores closing down sale Wood Green, London 3 August 2016
context_page_description: British Home Stores, commonly abbreviated to BHS and latterly legally styled BHS Ltd, was a British department store chain, primarily selling clothing and household items. In its later years, the company began to expand into furniture, electronics, entertainment, convenience groceries and fragrance and beauty products.
  The company was founded in 1928 by a group of U.S. entrepreneurs, and had a total of 163 stores mainly located in high streets or shopping centres by the time of its closure in 2016, as well as 74 international stores across 18 separate territories.
  BHS was previously a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but was bought by Sir Philip Green in 2000 and taken private. The company became part of Green's Arcadia Group in 2009. Following a number of loss-making years, the company was sold to the consortium Retail Acquisitions Ltd led by the serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell, in March 2015 for the nominal price of £1.
  In April 2016, 13 months after the purchase by Retail Acquisitions, the company entered administration following unsuccessful attempts to continue trading.
context_section_description: On 24 April 2016, Dominic Chappell (owner of Retail Acquisitions) announced that administrators would be appointed the next day. It was announced that the chain had entered administration on 25 April 2016, putting 11,000 jobs at risk. Duff & Phelps were appointed administrators and sought to sell the business as a going concern. It at this point had debts of £1.3 billion including £571 million in pension liabilities, meaning either individual assets (such as stores) would have to be sold or the chain would be in new ownership. UK sports chain Sports Direct was reported to be in talks to buy a number of BHS stores, but no buyer was found for the company, resulting in the closure of BHS stores. Head office staff were made redundant on the announcement that no buyer had been found, with stores expected to last up to 8 weeks selling the remaining stock. On 23 July 2016, the administrators Duff and Phelps shut 20 stores, and the next week another 30. Closure of the final outlets was on 28 August 2016. The insolvent part of the company finally went into liquidation on 2 December 2016, with the remainder of winding up proceedings commencing on that date.
  The Qatari Al Mana Group purchased the company's international franchise stores and online operations in June 2016. The group formed a new business, BHS International (UK) Limited, based in London. It launched a website, bhs.com, under the new brand name "The British Home Store" in September 2016. Al Mana announced that the website would close by 27 June 2018, shifting focus to their international franchise business.
caption: BHS customers queue during a closing down sale at Wood Green, London
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