British department store chain BHS is to close with the loss of up to 11,000 jobs, administrators said Thursday after failing to find a buyer.

The 88-year-old chain, which sells clothing, food and homeware, has failed to keep pace with traditional rivals such as Marks & Spencer and online giants like Amazon, resulting in a major loss of market share.

"Philip Duffy and Benjamin Wiles, managing directors of Duff & Phelps (the administrators) have today announced the orderly wind down of the BHS business," read a statement.

The company's 163 stores will enter "close-down sale mode" over the coming weeks in an "orderly wind-down" of the business.

A total of 11,000 jobs are in peril, comprising 8,000 BHS staff who are "likely to go", plus another 3,000 non-BHS in-store employees also at risk.

There you go Tasman.

Your chance to get your share of 11,000 referral prospects.

Thanks for the heads up

Once Clixsense became a household name. All our dead referrals will come back make us multi millionaire. We are laughing in the bank.

all of this was on the bbc news channel the other day, there was a hearing about why BHS collapsed.

as i understand it, quite a few years ago a guy paid £200 million for it. he paid himself a dividend of £400 million and sold the whole operation for a single pound when it was losing money hand over fist a few years later.

it was alleged the other day (on live TV) that after all that had happened the person who was in charge of it also took some money out, i think it was £1.5 million or something. when he was questioned about this being 'theft' apparently he made threats to kill. the man in question was at the same hearing but i cant remember what he said.

i dont know any more than that but it sounds shady

It collapsed because nobody shopped there since 1979, except at the end of August to spend school uniform vouchers.

In the 90's, it was a shop where your auntie might shop. In the 00's, it was a shop where your auntie might tell you her auntie shopped.