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Philip Green is a British billionaire businessman who owns some of the United Kingdom's largest retailers including British Home Stores, and the Arcadia Group. He has also made two unsuccessful takeover bids for Marks and Spencer, an icon of British retailing.
Philip Green was born March 15, 1952 in Croydon, in South London. When his father died at the age of twelve, Philip was in line to inherit the family business. He made his first million by buying a jeans retailer for £65,000 and selling it for £3 million. In 1999, he made a £560 million bid for the Sears retail group, which he later broke up and sold, making £150 million.
Philip Green first shot to fame in 1999 when he attempted to make a £7 billion hostile bid for Marks and Spencer. However the leaking of the bid forced up M&S's share price. The board of M&S were also hostile to the bid and sought to block it. Eventually Green gave up and purchased the British Home Stores chain for £200 million. Green turned BHS around, and the chain is now thought to be worth £1 billion. The purchase of Arcadia Group, which owns such chains as Top Shop and Burtons in 2002, makes Green's empire the second largest clothes retailer in the UK after Marks and Spencer.
In 2004, Philip Green re-launched his Marks and Spencer bid, with £8 billion of cash available. On July 15 the same year, Green announced through his holding company Revival Acquisitions Limited the withdrawal of the offer to acquire M&S.
In 1985, his friend Cyril Paskin and his close friends established the Philip Green Memorial Trust (PGMT), in honor of him and pledged to continue the good work Philip had begun in the East End of London where he grew up. Since Philip's daughter Rosalind died at a very young age from meningitis, so it was decided that the majority of the Trust's efforts would be directed in helping children.
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