Sir Ralph Halpern obituary

theguardian.com:

Ralph Halpern, who has died aged 83, was the most flamboyant member of a group of retail and property tycoons who flourished, and then mostly fell, during the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. This was a remarkable period of British entrepreneurial endeavour, when a handful of talented, greedy and fearless businessmen changed the face of shopping in Britain.

His brands, Top Shop (which became Topshop), Principles, Top Man and several others within the Burton Group, became legendary in the industry. At its peak in the mid-80s, Burton Group was taking one pound in every eight spent on clothing in Britain – only Marks & Spencer could claim more. Yet, within a few years, the group had passed its apex – its share of the market was in decline and in 1990 Halpern was the victim of a boardroom coup.

In many ways, Halpern got what he deserved, both the good and the bad. He was variously feted or otherwise as the first British businessman to collect a £1m-plus pay packet, a keep-fit fanatic who had a £2m gymnasium built in the basement of Burton Group’s headquarters and, thanks to the kiss-and-tell stories of a model named Fiona Wright in 1987, a man with a voracious sexual appetite.

An inspired despot who, like so many of his peers, believed himself to be a genius, Halpern was a man with an exceptional feel for retailing. He rightly saw that the shops that would be most successful in parting young people from their money needed three ingredients: flair, theatre and value.

However, he was a flawed genius, for he courted danger, seemed obsessed with gaining the favours of young women and took short cuts with his accounts which, although legal, gave a somewhat inflated view of the real bottom line. In time, each of these