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.

Hinchliffe was the 2nd largest UK Renault new car dealer in the 1970s. After training to be an accountant, Hinchliffe worked in a Sheffield engineering company and a Trent Regional Health Authority. He switched to marketing at grocers Mars and computer systems company Memorex.

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. Using the profits from that sale and other property deals, including Norwich Union's Sheffield building, he bought the Midlands engineering firm James Wilkes, among other things a beermat maker, and became chairman after profits rapidly increased. The company headquarters was moved to Beauchief Hall in Sheffield, a stately home with a disco in the basement. Another engineering firm, Petrocon, attempted a hostile takeover of Wilkes and highlighted what it said were Hinchliffe's excesses, but the takeover failed in 1992. In the early 1990s, the West Midlands fraud squad arrested Hinchliffe without charge when investigating another company, WB Industries, who he had had property dealings with. He left Wilkes, receiving £533,000 in severance pay; he received a further £131,000 from a computer services company Lynx Holdings when he was forced to resign his chairmanship of that firm by the board.

After leaving Wilkes in 1992, he unsuccessfully took on several other companies in tennis court surfacing, soccer kits, and retail, including Shoesave, renamed to Echolake Properties, Bukta Sportswear, 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. The DTI investigated all three company collapses. Other deals included buying Cooper Ludlam cutlery, Colibri lighters, French & Scott cosmetics, and property deals in Sheffield – including the Sheffield Royal Hospital site and the city centre Gateway Project. Up until being banned from being a company director until 2013 by the Department of Trade and Industry in 1998 due to the En-Tout-Cas/Boxgrey collapse, Hinchliffe had been on the board of 60 companies. His wife was also a director of some of the companies. He was declared bankrupt in 2001.

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