M&S: Can Green save the group?

SO, it's come to this. The great Marks & Spencer quaking at the prospect of being taken over by the rough, tough trader; many in the City urging him on; customers wondering what will happen to the store they like to think they own.

For years now, M&S managers have been obsessed by Philip Green. He, in turn, has made no secret of his contempt for the way they run the business.

Throughout all the talk of launching new childrenswear with David Beckham, rolling out Simply Foods, unveiling the Lifestore concept from Vittorio Radice, the whizz who transformed Selfridges, and moving to state-of-the-art offices in Paddington, there's been a sense of a group of people looking over their shoulders.

Green, the man they profess to loathe, has always been there: expansive, successful, telling anyone who will listen just how it is, what he would love to do to M&S.

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Until recently, if you mentioned Green's name to the likes of Luc Vandevelde, M&S's departing chairman and Roger Holmes, the chief executive, they would visibly twitch. Last night, the look was one of total dismay. Their worst fears have been realised: Green wants to buy their company and they're not in a position to do much about it.

Days are numbered

THEY will surround themselves with a legion of highly paid advisers, who will claim - in their presence at least - to share a similar disdain for the billionaire who worked wonders at BhS and Arcadia.

They will question his ability to run a large public company - something that has tested him in the past. They will ask if he can manage a major food business - something he has never done. They will highlight his ownership of much of the rest of the High Street and argue that, with M&S, it will be way too much. They may try to find an alternative buyer or one may spring its own £10bn bid.

In reality, they know, deep down, their days running what was once Britain's retail powerhouse, the only store chain that genuinely was part of the fabric of the nation, are numbered.

Privately, they will be seething and humiliated - all their years of working their way up corporate ladders, of learning management theory, of drawing up yet more plans to save M&S, tossed out of the window.

If Green clears the competition hurdles and wins the prize he's coveted - more so since he declared he was thinking about bidding a few years ago only to be embarrassed when M&S trumpeted Green's wife had been buying shares ahead of a possible move by him - the group's 67,000 staff can expect a white-knuckle ride.

For the first time in a long while they will be run by a born retailer, a man who left school with no qualifications and started out importing shoes and selling them. Hierarchies and ranks of management - non-productive 'suits; in Green speak - can expect little mercy.

Big money maker

FOR £10bn he will buy a business that has lost all sense of direction and literally, in the last weeks, lost its leader altogether. He will inherit the legacy of what to do with M&S.

He will receive the biggest mailbag of any retailer anywhere as everyone under the sun tells him what to do. But he will also get 300 stores that employ 47,000 people full-time and 67,000 in total, those figures alone may provide some clue as to where he will start.

He will not, contrary to public perception, be buying a loss-making business: M&S makes money, lots of it (£677m at the last count) but not enough for the City and a pittance when put alongside the behemoths of Tesco and Asda.

He will also collect the best property portfolio of any High Street retailer - not out-of-town; M&S, to its dying shame, turned its nose up at out of town when superstores became all the rage and by the time it woke up, Tesco and the rest were away, far over the horizon - and one that is freehold. For Green, who can sell property as well as he can sell clothes, the properties are a dream.

Unlike the existing management, Green isn't forced to cling to historic sensitivities. Of course, he will be sensitive to local feelings (underneath the hard exterior, there is a heart and if there's one thing he can't abide, it's criticism) but those stores that don't come up to scratch will be closed.

Suppliers can expect to be squeezed until they hurt - and if they can't stand the pain, fair enough, he will go somewhere else. Green knows better than anyone how to source in Asia, how to gain quick turn-round, how to stretch payment as long as possible. The old M&S claim to be 'Made in Britain', which was changing anyway, will not loom large in his thinking.

It was always said by clothing and food manufacturers around the country that the most demanding client to have was M&S. They would say this while showing off a spanking new production facility, in a smart building with their limousines parked outside. It may be hard, working for M&S, but it was lucrative, too. And possibly, too cosy as well. Life under Green will be very different, if they get to keep the business at all.

Giant task

THE stores will change. Fewer lines, less mess, less overpowering, blurring choice, more value for money, more speed, more responsive to customers' wants. These are the things Green knows and does by instinct.

Another concern for management, of maintaining a distinctive M&S 'feel', is also anathema to him. At Topshop, he has shown himself to be a shameless copier of other people's ideas. If the product looks good and people will want it, he will supply it - talk of something not being 'right for M&S' is likely to be met with ridicule and scorn.

It won't be plain sailing, though. Green has never taken on anything of this scale before. Even if he is helped by another heavyweight retailer, as chief executive, turning round M&S is a giant task. He lives in Monaco these days, he's got BhS and Arcadia to manage already, how can he work the magic again? He is, however, a good spotter of talent, he does gather teams around him and drive them on.

But if he is allowed to keep his existing franchise he has to be careful of cannibalisation. The current M&S regime has a problem attracting young people who are all flocking to Topshop.

Likewise, BhS will suffer if M&S moves into its territory. But Green is no fool: he will take care not to destroy what he already owns.

In 1884, Michael Marks opened his first market stall at Kirkgate in Leeds. It was sell, sell, sell then. It will be sell, sell, sell again. On his marriage certificate, Marks described himself as 'a licensed hawker'. He would have liked Philip Green.

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