Sir Philip Green has apologised for the sale of BHS and its "sad" collapse, telling an MPs' inquiry he is finding a solution to the £571m pension deficit - pledging "we'll sort it".
The retail tycoon said he took ultimate responsibility for the pension shortfall under questions from the joint Business and Work & Pensions committees.
It has proved to be the combative and tetchy session that was predicted - lasting more than four hours so far.
On the controversial sale of BHS last year for £1 to Dominic Chappell's Retail Acquisitions, Sir Philip said he would "1,000,000%" never have sold BHS to him had advisers told him not to - despite a Goldman Sachs 'sniff test' identifying he had previously been declared bankrupt.
He added that Retail Acquisitions was fully aware of the pension liability - insisting it was in the firm's due diligence - but in hindsight "we found the wrong buyer" and he was "sorry" the deal was done with the loss of 11,000 jobs.
Sir Philip looked to dominate the exchanges with MPs from the off and was accused of being "thin-skinned" for taking issue with many lines of questioning.
He argued it was unreasonable for him to have seen every bit of paper and been told everything. At one stage the billionaire even asked a committee member, Richard Fuller, to stop staring at him because it was making him uncomfortable.
He first told the committee: "Nothing is more sad than how this has ended and I hope during the morning you will hear that there was no intent on my part for anything to be like this and didn't need to be like this.
"I just want to apologise to all the BHS people who are involved in this and have been involved".
He admitted mistakes were made in the running of BHS under his watch - including on stock purchases and going online late.
The Topshop tycoon said he had "too strong an emotional tie" with BHS and had probably held onto it for too long and should have sold in 2002 to escape expensive leases that were already in the business before he bought it in 2000.
He was asked to account for £400m in dividends exceeding profits between 2002 and 2004. He dismissed that insisting profits over the period totalled £537m and his Arcadia retail empire had injected £600m into BHS.
However, he did acknowledge an ongoing £20m annual payment to his wife from the purchase of BHS by Arcadia.
He went on to describe a "disconnect" with pension trustees and was never involved with their strategy, arguing he could not do everything in a very large company. He admitted communication was poor but he was "not in charge of the pension fund".
He apologised for not getting involved in tackling a growing deficit until 2012 and said he took responsibility for its size but added that the pensions regulator had failed to make contact until recently.
Following lengthy exchanges, the billionaire confirmed he was working with Deloitte on a plan to ensure the 20,000 members of the schemes get a solution but he stopped short of committing that each person would get their full entitlement.
His remarks implied his likely contribution would be higher than the £275m cost of paying benefits under the Pension Protection Fund.
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