Billionaire on a shopping spree

Retailer Philip Green is having the last laugh -- and it has come in the form of a dividend cheque that almost doesn't have space for the zeroes.

He's already the star of the British high street and has built a personal fortune worth around £3 billion and counting. This week he's richer by another £460 million and the money is certainly being stashed away in a war chest for the next grand shopping spree.

Green's rise to billionairedom has come at extraordinary speed. Five years ago he was a behind-the-counter genius searching for a retail chain on which he could work his magic. In 2000 he hit lucky and snapped up failing and dowdy retailer BHS (the former British Home Stores, best known as a downmarket Marks & Spencer).

Two years later he pulled out his wallet once again and picked up a massive controlling stake in Arcadia, Britain's second-largest retail chain. Arcadia owns familiar names like Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Top Shop.

Britain's ace retailer certainly picked up bargains during his shopping expeditions. It's reckoned that he now controls 10 per cent of the clothing retail business in Britain. More importantly, he has turned his chains from languishing also-rans into cash-machines.

He bought BHS for £200 million, swiftly turned it around, and has so far transferred a mindboggling £400 million to his own bank account. Earlier this year he picked up a £40 million dividend from BHS, which has now dressed itself in flashy, saleable colours.

Green is only 52 and it's a safe bet that the best is still to come. In July he made a second bid to buy Marks & Spencer, which has ruled British high streets for three decades.

The bid was beaten back amidst much acrimony but everyone's waiting for the rerun. Anyone who stepped into M&S during the '90s can testify that the chain has lost its magic formula somewhere down the line.

The stores are filled with rows of blue suits and button-down shirts and hardly anything that catches the eye. Green's bid came after years of slipping profits at the middle-of-the-road chain which once could do no wrong.

Then, there was the bid for Safeway, the country's fourth-largest supermarket chain which had fallen on hard times but which had a strong hold on the lower end of the market.

Green pulled out halfway through the bid without fully explaining why. But analysts say the aborted raid shows he also has designs on Britain's supermarket sector.

The fact is that Britain's retail industry has been building up for a shakeout. Once powerful chains like M&S have lost their pizzazz and are waiting to be roused from their somnolence. Amongst the supermarkets too, Sainsbury's, once the king of the British dining table, lost its recipe for success and was overtaken by the brasher Tesco.

Sainsbury's still has a strong middle-class following but it's reckoned to be ripe for a takeover. By an interesting coincidence, M&S Managing Director Stuart Rose was formerly the Arcadia chief.

Amazingly, Green's triumphs have come even though economic growth has slowed and shoppers have turned cautious. He has, in fact, earned a large part of his profits simply by stripping out inefficiencies from the system. Sales have climbed but only slowly.

Nevertheless, he's now moving forward quickly and adding 53 new stores to the Arcadia chains. Also, he's spending £20 million on BHS, which is slowly being transformed with smarter shopfronts. Green has a reputation as a hands-on manager who gets his hands into all aspects of the retailing business.

Are there lessons in Green's triumphs for India's budding retail sector? So far only a few of the wannabe chain store owners have figured out the secret of how to keep merchandise and money moving at the right speed.

But any analyst will testify that retailing can be an amazingly brutal game. One slip and shoppers will look away and walk on by. Philip Green has discovered the secret of making sure shoppers step in -- and make him richer each time.