Neville Kahn of joint administrators Coopers & Lybrand said: "On Friday we went to court and were granted an order to sell the business and assets to the best cash offer." He said he believed the deal would save over 2,000 jobs.Mr Green said he was pleased to have captured Mark One after a long battle with Mr Ahmed of Joe Bloggs "I feel like I've gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson," he said.. That deal gave him 128 high street branches, 22 out-of-town stores and 55 in-store concessions. He acquired Xceptions in May 1993 and the 13 Owen Owen department stores in 1994. Last November he combined with Tom Hunter of Sports Division to pay pounds 25m for Olympus Sports. They will all be run as seperate businesses.Analysts remain mystified about his intentions. John Richards, at NatWest Securities said: "I'm not sure what he's up to.

I'm not sure he has a gameplan or if he just feels Mr Hinchliffe needs competition."Mr Green, who left the What Everyone Wants group Amber Day in 1992, has built his retail group in less than three years. However, he does not plans to put his purchases under one company to achieve economies of scale. Mr Green said there would be rationalisation which would include some head office job losses. We are going to run them for a profit."If you look at the businesses I've got - department stores are back in vogue, sportswear is booming and Mark One is in value for money fashion which can do very well."He added that he had no plans to take his company public: "No thanks."For Mark One, Mr Green beat off competition from Shami Ahmed of the Joe Bloggs jeans company who had also offered pounds 7m for the company. He is challenging Stephen Hinchliffe, the Sheffield entrepreneur, as the saviour of all things collapsing on the high street.Commenting on his latest purchase Mr Green said: "It's an interesting group put together in under three years They are all valuable businesses in their own right It's not a property play. Mark One recorded losses of almost pounds 2m on sales of pounds 95m last year. With Olympus Sports, the Xceptions group of discount shops and the 13 Owen Owen department stores, Mr Green presides over a group of almost 400 shops with sales of around pounds 500m.

Mr Green paid more than pounds 7m cash for the 95 stores which collapsed into administration 10 days ago with debts of pounds 17m. Philip Green, the former chairman of the What Everyone Wants retail group, added another high street chain to his growing high street interests yesterday when he acquired the Mark One women's fashion shops. E&Y may have views that deserve to be aired but by seeking to out-publicise Sir David it is in danger of encouraging just those industrialists who have struggled with the transparency he has sought to introduce, especially since he and the board are only doing what standard- setters in others parts of the world are doing.. As Chris Swinson, recently elected as vice-president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, has famously admitted, the statement "true and fair view" once rarely amounted to any more than a guess. E&Y, which insists that the firm's stance has nothing to do with the fact that over the years it has acted for BTR and Hanson, two of Britain's most acquisitive companies, claims to have serious technical concerns with the approach set out there.The problem is that just about everybody else sees the attack as opportunistic marketing that threatens to undo the progress that Sir David and his colleagues have made since the late 1980s. The document in question carries the stamp of Ernst & Young, and is a response to the draft Statement of Principles issued for consultation by the ASB late last year. His knack of coming up with memorable quotes goes some way to explaining why this champion of such an exciting- sounding subject as transparent accounting has won favour with the media.

But his latest soundbite - describing a document as displaying "all the vision of a mole and the eloquence of a whoopee cushion" - goes somewhat further than the norm.What is going on? Can this really be the world of accountancy? Well, yes, at a time when writs fly at an increasing rate and the language of business is getting steadily more robust, it can and is. There are plenty of diehard opponents, but there are many more who either see the benefits of introducing some form of order- driven system into the City, or accept that their scepticism is not enough to hold back the inevitability of reform.Robust language in the world of accountancySir David Tweedie, chairman of the Accounting Standards Board, has always been ready with a telling phrase. But change there will have to be, that much is clear from a preliminary assessment of the responses. Crunching this confusing multitude of preferences and options into a single, clear proposal for change is going to test the exchanges' computer to the limit.It would be going rather too far to say, come back Michael Lawrence, all is forgiven, but the kaleidoscope of responses does dramatically demonstrate the difficulties in marshalling this unruly multitude of members, full of opposing vested interests, in favour of voluntary change.

Unfortunately, these are wildly divergent, even to the ludicrous extent of different parts of the same firm, such as the asset management and broking arms at Kleinwort Benson or Schroders, not being able to agree the same line. And they offer just about every possible permutation human ingenuity could produce.About the only element of consistency is that everyone, from private client stockbroker to mega-market-maker, from institutional fund manager to retail punter, wants the system best suited to its needs. The responses to its questionnaire on introducing a fully automated order-matching system, which would bring London into line with all other major international financial centres, have certainly been fulsome They fill three large folders. If Britain's most powerful investment institutions were prepared to put their name to something similar, that might really do the trick.