Profit or plunder?

The Bottom Line

Asset management - or asset stripping? This week Evan Davis asks when making a profit from running a business becomes simple plundering.

In business, things go wrong at the best of times ... mistakes are made, luck turns bad. But sometimes things can also go wrong not because of bad luck, but because someone makes money out of failure.

The "profit or plunder" question has been raised by events at BHS. It was struggling, facing intense competition in a tough retail environment. But the owner took quite a bit of money out of the company. And the staff pension fund went into deficit. Sir Phillip Green, who was then in charge, sold the business to an inexperienced former bankrupt who didn't make it work and it is now in administration.

This has made a lot of people angry - but aside from BHS, how do we distinguish between a case that is bad luck, a bad apple, or a system that is badly designed?

Joining Evan Davis in the Bottom Line studio this week are Bruce Davis of peer-to-peer lender Abundance, Breffni Walsh of Brands Are Best and Garry Wilson of private equity firm Endless LLP.