Who won the battle?

BILLIONAIRE retailer Philip Green tried and failed to buy Marks & Spencer a year ago. But if he now thinks that was a lucky escape, he's not letting on.

Despite the spending slowdown on the High Street that has devastated some retailers and hampered the revival at M&S, Green has lost none of the self-belief that sustained him through the bitter two-month public battle for the chain.

Speaking exclusively to Financial Mail, Green insisted his plans for M&S would have been a success, and he claimed he could have achieved a turnround far faster than his erstwhile adversary Stuart Rose, chief executive of M&S, would achieve.

At the core of Green's argument is the supply chain he maintains for the 2,500-plus shops that make up the Burton-to-Dorothy Perkins group Arcadia as well as his Bhs stores.

He said: 'I always believed that having a supply chain such as ours was the key to turning it round. This was the one essential piece of the strategy required to sort out the business at speed. I said it would take three to five years for a full recovery. Maybe Stuart thought the supply chain he was inheriting was better than he found it to be.'

Rose, on the other hand, would say he has made with the supply chain. Indeed, at the beginning of last July, only weeks before Green abandoned his bid, Rose announced an improved discount structure negotiated with suppliers that would save the company £100m a year.

A second phase in the plan to introduce new supplier agreements has recently begun, with regional offices opened in Turkey, India and China.

Rose, who insists there are no quick fixes for the business, has in the past year substantially reduced prices at the troubled store, sacked about 650 head office staff, returned £2.3bn in cash to shareholders and sold M&S's financial services arm.

The next stage in the process is to sort out the working practices for staff on the shopfloor, refurbish 21 stores and cut back the plethora of clothing brands. The steady and measured approach, which the City said was 'encouraging', is a million miles away from the war of words this time last year.

Old friends Green and Rose were driven apart by the process and at one stage were seen rowing in the street outside M&S's former headquarters in Baker Street, central London. The pair have since made up and now talk on a regular basis.

Today, Green is as careful as Rose not to revive the ill feelings and war of words that escalated at the time of the bid.

But he cannot resist a jibe at M&S's recent lengthy search for a new chairman, which saw non-executive Kevin Lomax publicly pitched against interim chairman Paul Myners. The spat ended with the appointment of Lord Burns, who starts in July next year.

'My timescale of three to five years was in a private environment,' said Green. 'The public market, on the other hand, would require a different timescale. The visibility and rigours of the marketplace require different strategies - especially when you have to waste weeks worrying about who will be your part-time chairman.'

But where both Green and Rose agree is over the worrying backdrop on the High Street, where overall sales figures for fashion have fallen as much as 15% below last year's levels in some weeks.

Last week, when Rose reported a 19% profits plunge to £618m, he agreed conditions were tough, but said that the recovery process was on track.

'It will be difficult for the next six to nine months, but that won't deflect us from improving M&S,' said Rose.

But if Green had known last May what the market would be like, would he still have made such a bold move?

He said: 'The High Street is always challenging and always demanding, so it would not have made a difference. We will have to see how the next year works out with the tough environment we now find ourselves in.'

Green ruled himself out of making a fresh bid for M&S in February, but the troubled giant is clearly never far from his thoughts.