Stephen Hinchliffe

Stephen Leonard Hinchliffe (born 2 January 1950, in Sheffield) is an English businessman from Sheffield who was the founder of the former retail empire Facia group, which had up to 850 stores before it collapsed in 1996. He has been a director of 60 companies. He was jailed in 2001 and 2003 for bribery and fraud.

Wilkes In 1984, Hinchliffe led a management buyout of the Sheffield department store chain Wades, then suffering a £2m deficit, from Asda with a £200,000 stake. After the sale the chain returned a £2m profit and was sold on for £20m to Waring & Gillow – the buyout team made £7.3m profit and he personally made £2.9m. and surfacing company En-Tout-Cas, renamed to Boxgrey. Boxgrey collapsed in 1994, with shares being transferred to four British Virgin Islands companies just prior to the collapse.

Hinchliffe's Facia group, with its headquarters at Parkhead Hall in Sheffield, rapidly became a retail empire with 850 British high street shops (more than Marks and Spencer at the time), over 6000 employees, and over £250m in turnover, second only to Littlewoods as a private retail group in the United Kingdom.

Collapse and trials Facia group did not file accounts in 1996 and attempted to change the terms of the rental agreement on the shops. United Mizrahi Bank decided to withdraw from lending, auditors including Deloitte and Touche declined to sign off the 1994/5 accounts for Sock Shop and Salisbury's, and the former owners and leasers of Saxone, Sears withdrew support. Hinchliffe tried to arrange a sale to Texas American Group, who later sued Facia for giving them misleading figures, but the group collapsed in June 1996, owing £70m, and was brought into receivership by KPMG and Grant Thornton. In December 1996 the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation. Hinchliffe served two years of his sentence, which had been reduced to four years on appeal, and was released on probation in January 2003. He and associate Christopher Harrison were subsequently convicted by Judge Jeremy Roberts in April 2003 of fraud associated with Facia's invoices. Hinchliffe served a further 18-month sentence after pleading guilty to the £1.75m fraud, increased from a non-custodial 15-month suspended sentence in July 2003 after an appeal by the SFO and the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith. Twenty additional charges were dropped to save trial costs of up to £10m. He was released from jail in 2005.

Hoyland Fox Hinchliffe was brought in by the Smith family, owners of Alexander Seven Marketing, to buy Hoyland Fox, a Goldthorpe-based umbrella company. He arranged the purchase by his wife's firm Mozaic in June 2007 using a loan from Hoyland Fox to Mozaic – a practice called "whitewashing." The Smiths said they believed the purchase was on their behalf, but Hinchliffe later claimed that the agreement had been a 50:50 share in ownership between the two families. The Hinchliffes tried to gain control over Hoyland Fox in early 2008 due to what they said were disputed expenses and false invoices, but the Smiths put the company into receivership by withdrawing funds. In March 2010, Hinchliffe and his wife were found guilty by Judge Hazel Marshall in the Chancery Division of the High Court of "conspiring with intent" to take over the company when acting as agents for the Smith family.

Benefit fraud In July 2015, Hinchliffe pleaded guilty at Sheffield Magistrates Court to overclaiming £4,228.89 in pension credits during 2012 and 2013.

Personal life Hinchliffe was born in Sheffield and is the son of a civil servant or a postal clerk. After being released in 2005 he lived in a £1.5m mansion owned by his wife in Hope, Derbyshire. In 2015, he was living in Greenhill, Sheffield.