The knighthood awarded to former BHS boss Sir Philip Green is being kept “under review”, the Cabinet Office has said.
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Administrators Duff & Phelps are expected to confirm the timetable on Monday, although many stores will cease trading well before that date, Sky News reported.
Twenty stores are due to close today and it is understood that the rest will close by August 20. The closure of the remaining BHS stores will put about 5,000 workers out of a job.
The high street giant was controversially sold by Sir Philip Green for just £1 a year ago to three-times bankrupt former racing driver Dominic Chappell.
The collapse left a £571m pension black hole and 11,000 jobs facing the axe.
The former owner of ailing British department store BHS has been heavily criticised in recent months after he withdrew large amounts of money from shortly before he sold it, and it collapsed.
“If the Sovereign approaches a recommendation to revoke an honour, a notice of forfeiture is placed in the London Gazette”, a statement to Labour MP Jim McMahon said. “However, we continue to keep the case under review”.
Duff & Phelps, which has sold BHS’s online and global operations to the Qatar-based al-Mana Group, declined to comment. He had sold it for just £1 ($1.31) in March 2015, to Dominic Chappell, a businessman who had previously gone bankrupt three times.
Some £423m was paid out in dividends from BHS in the first few years of Sir Philip’s ownership.
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He told a Commons inquiry committee last month that he would “fix” the pension problem at BHS.
