Ashley tipped to take Sport Direct private … again

[Rob W]

what you forget LLO is that he might have to deal with some of the people he's run rings around in the past - and I can assure you they'll see him starve in the gutter rather than help him

 

So far this hasn't touched the club - principally because we already have a load of decent finance in place negotiated by Fat Fred - the problem might come if we want/need to roll it over or increase it

 

He also will have trouble getting decent managment - the word is out that he wants to run the shop himself and so all he'll get are creeps and brown-nosers - and that is the first step towards disaster

[Thespence]

The reality is that he'll be surrounded by people making those sort of decisions for him who have an excellent knowledge of exactly what they are doing, even if he does have the final say.

 

You would think so BUT respected city bod David Richardson who was chairman quit & the reasons he gave "unable to establish a strong working relationship with with the executive team"

 

An old article:

 

Nick Bubb at Pali International said: 'There is nobody at the company to comment, the house brokers are adopting a very low profile and Panmure have capitulated and moved it to sell.' Sports Direct does not have a public relations agency or an investor relations team - there was no contact name or phone number at the end of today's statement.

 

Although it said it intended to hire a PR firm soon, several big City firms said they had not been asked to pitch for the business. One senior PR said: 'We'd love to help them. You phone them up and there's no answer.'

 

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing-and-markets/article.html?in_article_id=419751&in_page_id=3

 

 

 

See the bit in bold.  They'd all love a piece of it though! 

 

Well  of  course any City PR firm is going to like to like working with Sport Direct, in the same way Red Adair loved oil well on fire.

[Kitman]

When I worked in the UK I had a little insight into the dealings of the stock market.  The reality is that your average PLC puts a huge amount of effort into sucking up to analysts, PR and providing up to the minute information to investors, market makers and the press. This is quite normal as surprises in the stock market like out of the blue profit warnings usually have an exaggerated impact on share price, which PLCs badly want to avoid for various reasons.  Ashley plainly has been doing none of that and the analysts in particular have got the hump at the lack of information particularly in times of difficult trading and don't trust him anymore.

 

You can call that being clever, brave, ignorant, whatever, depends on your point of view.  Personally I don't think it's a cunning masterplan - more likely he's used to running his own company and 100% doing what he likes and doesn't want to compromise because some poncey-ex-public-schoolboy-pin-stripe-wearing-city-type wants him to suck his cock by spending lots of time and money on PR.  Unfortunately that's part of the City landscape and if he might be better off taking it private again if he doesn't want to go through the hassle.  Otherwise he should accept it's what's required and entrust his management team especially his finance director to get on with it if he doesn't want to do it himself.

[Thespence]

Nike looked set on Friday to win its £285m takeover of Umbro after Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct sold his 29.9 per cent stake in the England football team’s kit maker to the US sportswear group.

 

Sports Direct had a 29.9 per cent stake in Umbro and was posturing to block the deal – which requires 75 per cent of shareholders to accept – over worries that Nike’s ownership would lead to a deterioration in long-term supply terms.

 

 

The retailer announced that it had sold 29.1m shares at 193.06p each and entered into an irrevocable undertaking to vote the rest of its stake in favour of the Nike bid at a January shareholders’ meeting.

 

“That glass of [Christmas] champagne will taste sweeter,” said one person involved with seeing through the tricky deal.

 

Sports Direct said the immediate £56.1m “proceeds would be used to reduce borrowings”, which are running at about £600m and have concerned some analysts. The remainder of the stake is worth £28.1m and all together will yield a sizeable profit for Sports Direct, which started building its Umbro stake at about 120p.

 

The acceptance from Sports Direct leaves only one significant hurdle to the deal: the possibility that the Office of Fair Trading will refer the transaction to the Competition Commission over concern about Nike’s sizeable position in football.

 

The OFT has canvassed opinion across Europe from retailers and rivals to Nike on the US sportswear group’s bid, ranging from Puma in Germany to Debenhams in the UK.

 

If the OFT feels the acquisition deserves closer scrutiny it will refer it to the Competition Commission in the next few weeks, a step that would slow progress on any deal and could threaten it.

 

Merrill Lynch advised Nike; JPMorgan Cazenove advised Umbro.

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8424140-afc3-11dc-b874-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=e8477cc4-c820-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html

[Matt]

what you forget LLO is that he might have to deal with some of the people he's run rings around in the past - and I can assure you they'll see him starve in the gutter rather than help him

 

So far this hasn't touched the club - principally because we already have a load of decent finance in place negotiated by Fat Fred - the problem might come if we want/need to roll it over or increase it

 

He also will have trouble getting decent managment - the word is out that he wants to run the shop himself and so all he'll get are creeps and brown-nosers - and that is the first step towards disaster

 

Ashley may not be held in high regard, but present any bank with good security and good cashflow and they'll be preparing an underwrite no matter who is running the ship. A few bps over libor wont kill us.