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Disgraced tycoon Philip Green suing Financial Reporting Council over critical PwC report

SAM TOBIN reports from the High Court

SHAMED retail tycoon Philip Green took the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) accountancy watchdog to the High Court today to protect what is left of his reputation.

His company Taveta Investments — parent of Arcadia Group, which owns Topshop and Miss Selfridge — is trying to stop the FRC publishing a damning report into a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit of BHS.

The BHS collapse in 2016 cost 11,000 jobs and left a £571 million pension deficit just 13 months after Mr Green sold the company for £1 to Dominic Chappell, a three-time bankrupt with no previous retail experience.

An excoriating parliamentary report into the debacle, which blasted the “systematic plunder” of BHS as the “unacceptable face of capitalism,” left Mr Green’s reputation in tatters.

Last week, the FRC announced it had fined PwC £10m for its audit of BHS and Taveta’s accounts for the year to August 30 2014.

The FRC also fined the PwC partner responsible, Steve Denison, £500,000 and banned him for 15 years.

But the regulator cannot publish its full reasons due to Mr Green’s legal action.

Andrew Green QC, for Taveta, applied for an interim injunction preventing the FRC from publishing those findings relating to Taveta and “its directors and its employees.”

Taveta claims that the FRC failed to give it a “fair opportunity” to respond to criticisms of it before publication and criticised the FRC “all or nothing approach” by refusing to redact or amend its findings.

But Charles Bear QC, for the FRC, said publishing a redacted version would simply “provoke more questions than answers.”

Mr Justice Nicklin reserved judgment in the case, which he will deliver “as soon as I possibly can.”

Work and pensions committee chair Frank Field, who was at the hearing, revealed that Mr Justice Nicklin had provided him with a copy of the FRC findings, saying: “What’s not coming out here is that this attempt at a gagging order is also gagging Parliament.

“There is a wider public interest [in publication] than [in] protecting Sir Philip Green’s reputation.”

He pointed out that “11,000 jobs were destroyed and 23,000 pensioners each year get an even-lower pension.”

Mr Field asked: “How much treasure is one person’s reputation worth? It's being tested in the High Court today.”

Asked if the report was damning, Mr Field responded: “Why do you think he’s here?”

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