Ex-Wilko boss defends £77m division before store collapse
Ex-Wilko boss defends £77m division before store collapse
The granddaughter of Wilko’s founder has defended the company’s multimillion-dollar dividend payments in the run-up to its collapse.
Lisa Wilkinson, who helped run her family’s discount retail empire for 20 years, has dismissed criticism of the £77 million handed out to former shareholders, as first reported by The Mail on Sunday.
The payments were made over the past ten years, including the years when the company was loss-making.
She told The Sunday Times: ‘The board checked… if there was enough cash, we went through the right board, the accountants checked it.’ Wilkinson added, “Is there a part of me that lies awake at night saying I wish we’d never gotten a penny of dividend out of it?”
“Maybe we could have survived a few months longer. What we took out wouldn’t really have made any difference.’
Sign off?: 12,000 staff are on the brink of unemployment and there’s a £50m black hole in the company’s pension pot
But the payouts have angered unions, with 12,000 staff on the brink of unemployment and a £50 million black hole in the company’s pension pot.
Private equity firm M2 Capital made a last-minute bid for Wilko for £90m this weekend, pledging to keep all the jobs for two years.