The 222-page document in which Sir Philip Green sets out how he would like to restructure his – or, rather, his wife’s – Arcadia empire is a dense read. You will find enormous detail on which stores the group would like to close, where it would like landlords to accept cuts in rent, and how sales have declined at the Topshop-to-Miss Selfridge business.

But two facts tower over everything. Neither is mentioned in the so-called company voluntary arrangement (CVA) proposal but both will be familiar to anyone who has followed Green’s career. First, the family paid themselves a £1.2bn dividend from Arcadia in 2005. Second, the Greens, after pressure from MPs and the Pensions Regulator, coughed up £363m in 2017 for the pension scheme at BHS.

Frank Field, the MP who was in the vanguard of the BHS fight, was also quick off the mark this time, highlighting the large and glaring deficit in Arcadia’s pension scheme.

“When a similarly grim situation arose for BHS pension scheme members, you personally provided funding,” Field said in a letter to the still-wealthy retailer. “Might I please ask you to offer a guarantee to Arcadia staff that you would do the same for them should the deficit-reduction plan [in the CVA] prove insufficient – and this time without the need for the regulator or parliament to step in first?”

Well, quite. Green set a precedent at BHS. He accepted, in effect, that a rich owner who had extracted large dividends in happier times should help to repair a pension fund if the company is incapable of doing so. BHS had been sold a year before its collapse but, since the buyer was a former bankrupt with no retail experience, the claim still fell on the Greens. With Arcadia, there is no wriggle room: Lady (Tina) Green is the sole owner.

The other difference this time is that the Pensions Regulator seems to be awake. “We do not consider the [CVA] proposals are sufficient to ensure that members of the [pension] scheme are adequately protected,” it said. In other words, the Greens should dig deeper.

How much deeper? Well, the CVA proposal talks about Tina Green personally injecting £100m over three years but, since Arcadia would halve its annual contributions in the same period from £50m to £25m, the net effect would be an increase of only £25m. That would be a drop in the ocean in the context of a deficit estimated at £750m on one (admittedly strict) accounting basis.

Green’s more meaningful proposal is that the pension scheme would be granted security over assets up to a value of £185m. That’s a bigger number but it’s nowhere near enough in the context of a £750m deficit. Nor, more importantly, is it an upfront contribution in cash, which the regulator generally prefers. Viewed that way, the Greens are still living in another universe on pensions.

The regulator, if it wants to do its job properly, should start by asking for at least £250m upfront – on top of the other proposals. That would get the pension fund into a much better position, assuming Arcadia also gets its CVA, lives to fight another day and can return to making decent top-up payments.

Green might stamp his feet if asked for a quarter of a billion quid. He could even threaten to run away to Monaco permanently and let Arcadia collapse. But the moral case for a large cash contribution to the pension scheme is overwhelming.

That £1.2bn dividend was funded by loading Arcadia with debt, and the Greens are still driving around the Med on a £100m yacht. The needs of the pension scheme come first. That means cash – a lot of cash.

Facebook must weigh the risks of its cryptocurrency

Ever since its birth in the early years of this century, Facebook has built a reputation for innovation, on its path to becoming the world’s biggest social network.

On Friday we learned that Facebook plans to launch a cryptocurrency, potentially another game changer. The promise of its own digital payments system could lure users to make the platform an even more central part of their lives.

The move makes sound business sense. Banks could find themselves facing intense competition. The established financial system should be worried, given the parallels with payment methods on Chinese social platforms such as WeChat and Alipay. But there are other comparisons that Facebook will want to avoid, because of the dangers posed by cryptocurrencies.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company has faced intense criticism over data protection, fake news, and attempts by terrorists to use it as a vehicle to spread propaganda. The company is perceived by some as outside the control of governments.

Bitcoin and a legion of copycat cryptocurrencies promised financial exchange outside the reach of nation states. But regulators worry that crypto-assets offer a vehicle for criminals and terrorists. Users also found their encrypted data was not as safe as it seemed, losing money when they were hacked. And there could be further problems. Bitcoin and other existing cryptocurrencies leapt in value, akin to the tulip mania of the 17th century, before a crash in 2018.

There are promising signs that Facebook could overcome these risks. Reports suggest the company is looking at pegging the value of its cryptocurrency – referred to internally as GlobalCoin – to a basket including the US dollar, euro and Japanese yen. It has also reportedly discussed identity checks and money-laundering risks with the US treasury.

Details are slight before a launch planned for 2020. But if Facebook wants its digital currency to succeed, it will need to tackle these issues head on. Otherwise it could find its status tarnished further still.

The Bank of England should not trust financiers to look out for us

Banks and building societies in Britain are starting to take bigger risks with their mortgage lending as they seek to win a larger slice of the market, a senior Bank of England official admitted last week.

Bigger loans are being made over longer periods to people who might not be able to pay back the debt. Where have we heard that before? Could the spectre of Northern Rock, the bank nationalised during the financial crisis in 2008 after nervous customers tried to withdraw their funds from it, rise again?

Even more worryingly, City banks are developing the kind of complex financial products that became popular before the last financial crash. Not the same products, but ones that bring a new level of risk into the inherently unstable banking system.

If that isn’t enough to trigger a moment of panic, the central bank says it needs help from the industry to spot the worst excesses, now that the budget for its watchdog role has been frozen. Sam Woods, a deputy governor and chief executive of the Prudential Regulatory Authority, went as far as to ask bankers to consider becoming whistleblowers in the national interest when they came across excessive risk-taking.

The PRA was invented by George Osborne as part of a new regulatory structure for the City. Never again, said Osborne, would the watchdog for the financial system stand by while bankers chasing bonuses took the nation over the edge.

So it is of huge concern that Woods, who is a Treasury and Bank of England lifer – one who has never worked for a bank or any other institution in the City – believes they and their staff are likely help him ferret out dodgy financial products or excessive lending.

It displays a startling naivety when a tougher approach must be more appropriate. Britain should not slide backwards to the days of light-touch banking regulation. Those dark times should be behind us.