BBC bosses have admitted that they were not able to get detailed financial information about the performance of BBC Worldwide, the Corporation’s main commercial arm, until Rupert Gavin, the unit’s chief executive, announced his resignation in July, The Times has learnt.

Senior BBC executives told The Times that John Smith, finance director, struggled to gain access to Worldwide’s books until Mr Gavin’s exit was confirmed following a seven-year reign.

However, despite the concerns voiced by BBC bosses, Mr Gavin remains employed by the BBC until today.

The outgoing executive, who drew a salary of £373,000 last year, has spent the weeks leading up to his departure helping Mr Smith to conduct a detailed review of the business.

The review, necessary because the BBC headquarters does not know enough about the exact nature of Worldwide’s activities, will consider whether some or all of the operation should be sold.

It was initiated by the BBC’s new management team, Michael Grade, the chairman, and Mark Thompson, the Director-General, in July following concerns about the scale and activities of Worldwide.

BBC Worldwide operates commercially funded TV channels through joint ventures, which include UK Gold and BBC America, the face of the broadcaster in the US. It also publishes magazines, including Radio Times, and books, such as cookbooks by Delia Smith.

Relations between Mr Thompson and Mr Gavin were already under pressure when the review began. Mr Gavin was one of several executives that were dropped from the BBC’s executive committee by Mr Thompson shortly after the latter arrived in May.

A fortnight after the review began, Mr Gavin resigned, saying that he hoped to lead a venture capital bid for any elements of the business that BBC opted to sell.

The exercise is due to conclude by December, under an instruction from Mr Grade that all commercial activities have to be “programme related”.

BBC Worldwide earned £141 million during 2003-04, up from £123 million the previous year, and the business as a whole has been speculatively valued at as much as £1 billion. Profits from the business are used to fund the rest of the BBC’s activities.

Under Mr Gavin’s leadership, BBC Worldwide — whose business is based on the BBC’s licence-fee funded activities — described itself as “the strongest contender that Britain has in the global broadcast-based media sector,” according to its most recent annual report.

In expanding, BBC Worldwide was increasingly behaving like a fully commercial organisation, the report said. In February, Worldwide’s magazine business acquired Origin Publishing, a Bristol based publisher of specialist magazines such as Living History, for an unspecified sum.

The BBC justified the purchase of Origin with the argument that Origin’s expertise would help to make the BBC’s existing collection of specialist titles — such as BBC Wildlife and BBC Music — more profitable.

The magazine arm also had what the report called “serious international ambitions”. It signed a deal with Times of India, the Indian publisher, with a view to launching magazines in the sub-continent.

A spokesman for BBC Worldwide said that the suggestion that Mr Smith had been denied access to the full financial information was “nonsense”.