All 164 stores are to close and up to 11,000 jobs have been made redundant at beleaguered high street chain BHS, it has been announced.
Administrators Duff & Phelps have said that the business is to be liquidated after they failed to find a buyer for the chain. Rescue bids from former Mothercare boss Greg Tufnell and Sports Direct's Mike Ashley had raised hopes over the last few weeks, but ultimately a deal could not be made.

Said Duff & Phelps: "Although multiple offers were received, none were able to complete a deal due to the working capital required to secure the future of the company."

MD Philip Duffy added: " The British high street is changing and, in these turbulent times for retailers, BHS has fallen as another victim of the seismic shifts we are seeing.
"The tireless work and goodwill of the existing management team and employees of BHS with the support of my team were not enough to change the fortunes of the company."
BHS will, according to the administrators, enter a period of "orderly wind-down" and close down sales will feature heavily over the coming weeks.

It comes just hours after reports of the consortium lead by Mr Tufnell, banker Nick de Scossa and Jose Maria Soares Bento being a fore-runner for taking over the business, backed by an anonymous Portuguese family.

Meanwhile, the government enquiry into what went wrong at BHS - including the retailer's now famous £571m pensions blackhole - is rumbling on, with Dominic Chappell due to be questioned on the store's collapse next week. MPs heard from Arcadia's finance director Paul Budge last week, who claimed that the PPF and Arcadia met in March 2015.

According to Sky News, Mr Taylor is understood to have denied that the PPF was formally notified of a proposal to restructure BHS' pension obligations in 2014.