The granddaughter of Wilko’s founder apologised to axed workers yesterday, while admitting her family netted millions in payouts in the years prior to its collapse.
Lisa Wilkinson, the collapsed chain’s chairwoman, said she was “devastated” by its demise but grateful for everything the discount retailer’s staff did. Appearing emotional before MPs, she said: “I will be thanking my team members and my customers to my dying day.” Yet her words came as she was accused of making “significant management mistakes” that led to empty shelves and money wasted.
More than 12,000 staff lost their jobs when Wilko went to the wall in August. The collapse also left a £50million black hole in Wilko’s pension scheme. Liam Byrne, Labour chair of the Commons Business and Trade Committee, put it to Ms Wilkinson: “Did your greed bankrupt Wilko?” She responded: “I don’t believe so, no. In essence, Wilko failed because we ran out of cash.”
She went on to blame everything from a failed rescue plan to last year’s bungled mini-Budget for the retailer’s demise. During evidence she apologised to customers and workers, saying: “I am devastated that we have let each and every one of those people down.”
Committee member Ian Lavery repeated claims that the Wilkinson family “creamed off” nearly £150million from the business over 20 years. Ms Wilkinson said a big chunk of dividends were paid before 2014 to buy relatives out of their stake. She admitted about £15m had been paid in the past nine years to a holding company owned by family trusts. However, Ms Wilkinson claimed that money had gone into funding start-up firms, property and stock market investments. She said: “I don’t have assets to fill a £50million hole in the pension fund, I don’t”.
Mr Byrne, concluding the session, said Ms Wilkinson had admitted to a number of big mistakes around stock, range, furloughing staff and a botched £60m warehouse modernisation. “Despite those problems, you can’t explain why dividends went up,” Mr Byrne said. “We have money sloshing around in trusts that somehow can’t be used to refund the pension scheme.”