THE company which owns Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins has gone into administration, risking 13,000 jobs.
Arcadia, owned by Sir Philip Green, has hired administrators from Deloitte after profits plummeted because of the pandemic.
The administrators said that no redundancies would be announced today.
Topshop, Burton and other stores owned by the firm will continue to operate as normal and orders made over the weekend will be honoured, reports the BBC.
Ian Grabiner, the boss of Arcadia, said: "The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic including the forced closure of our stores for prolonged periods has severely impacted on trading across all of our brands," he said.
"Throughout this immensely challenging time our priority has been to protect jobs and preserve the financial stability of the group, in the hope that we could ride out the pandemic and come out fighting on the other side.
"Ultimately, however, in the face of the most difficult trading conditions we have ever experienced, the obstacles we encountered were far too severe."
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