BottledDog Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 If he had not tried to buy the club on the sly I am sure, even from his sick bed, Shepherd would have been only too happy to tell him about any problems with the club to try and put him off buying it. Wasn't the club up for sale unofficially regardless? I'm pretty sure there were a few others who had a look at the books and decided against buying. If Hall and Shepherd didn't want to sell the club, Ashley could never have bought it. The club spent £6 Million (I believe it was iirc) in the financial year previous to Ashley buying it in activities related to trying to sell it. Dividends were drying up/had dried up, they wanted out. Hall did, Shepherd didn't IIRC What difference does it make? He still sold at the end of the day. As a minority shareholder he had no choice once Ashley acquired a certain percentage if memory serves. He certainly didn't want to sell to Ashley. Well we don't really know that do we, although he certainly publicly gave the impression he didn't want to sell. He certainly knew that other interested parties had looked over the books with a view to buying the club so it's not like he can claim to have not been a party to the club being sold. He was unhappy to sell as he wanted to buy the club outright at somepoint. I'm sure he did. Would struggle to imagine how he thought he would he would have gone about doing that though. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paully Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Mike Ashley’s Debenhams bet takes another twist 'Baffling': analysts were left confused by the Sports Direct owner's moveNick Goodway Published: 16 January 2014 Updated: 11:44, 16 January 2014 Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct investment in Debenhams took another twist today as it sold its 4.6% share stake in the struggling department stores chain but took a complex financial option which could see it buy an even larger stake at a cheaper price. One veteran analyst described today’s announcement as “baffling”. Another said: “We all know Ashley likes a bit of a gamble. He’s doing it again.” In effect, Ashley, pictured, is betting on Debenhams share price falling further in the medium term while at the same time continuing to develop links with the group to sell celebrity-backed fashion and more upmarket sports brands through its 170 UK stores. Despite the complexity of the transaction its is understood that Sports Direct and Debenhams’ management to talk to each other at the highest level. Sports Direct revealed it had built up the 4.6% shareholding on Monday, 12 days after the chain issued a massive profits warning. It is believed Ashley’s group started buying shares around the 73p mark and carried on up to around 80p with an average price of around 75p. Yesterday afternoon the entire stake of 56.8 million was sold in the market, reportedly to several different institutional investors, at a price of 83.2p. That would have netted a profit of some £4.5 million. At the same time Sports Direct entered into an option agreement over 81.2 million shares. It has written what is known as an “in-the-money put option” with an unnamed third party who has paid a premium (also undisclosed) to Sports Direct. Ashley can buy the shares cheaply if they fall below a certain undisclosed exercise price but he can make no profit if they are above that price at the end of the option. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BottledDog Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 So let me get this straight. We bought part of Gomis, then sold his shoulder to 5 different agents for an instant profit, but at the same time agreed to buy the lower half of his body because a mystery party (let's assume Trabzonspor) forced us to by offering a lucrative bung for no apparent reason. This means at some point we'll own a large chunk of Gomis, will be forced to buy the rest of his body for the sake of decency, and we'll have secured him on a 5 1/2 year contract once we pay his agent enough money to give Trabzonspor first option on his other players? Fuck me, no wonder we have trouble signing people. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. The main two things that due diligence would have revealed were that the debt was repayable on a change of ownership (that's a pretty common condition but its not always the case) and the club was in the process of losing about £30 million for the year. Without being entirely sure why he bought us (and no one is) it's not easy to call whether he would have cracked on with the takeover if he was aware of those two issues. The club is actually in a far better state and worth a lot more now than when he bought it that's for sure. Whether its worth more than he paid for it is another matter. I'll bite. "in the process of losing about £30 million for the year" To be clear on this, the vast majority of this £30m "loss" was amortisation of players. It's an accountancy tool (which is quite flawed in the football club model) used to help value the assets of a company. This is not the same as the club spending £30m more than it brought in for the year as most people would understand that statement, and it is not as if Ashley suddenly had to find an extra £30m. I think the actual cash flow loss for the year was under £10m and included significant costs due to the takeover (director payoffs, loan early repayment costs, aborted refinancing costs, etc). The club was actually one of eight PL clubs to make profit before player amortisation & trading. "due diligence" I'm sick of this term being bandied about. Due diligence implies having a team of accountants and business analysts looking at the books and the fine print of contracts, etc over a period of weeks to look for problems. What we are talking about here that he is supposed to have missed when buying the club is absolute basic stuff that could be answered with a few questions. Ask any supporter who was remotely interested in the club's finances at the time and they could have told you about the repayment clause in the stadium loan. If he had not tried to buy the club on the sly I am sure, even from his sick bed, Shepherd would have been only too happy to tell him about any problems with the club to try and put him off buying it. Not doing due diligence is the equivalent of buying a car without getting it checked over by the AA. If he really didn't know about loans becoming due or current year losses, then it's the equivalent of buying it without turning the engine on to see if it starts. Refinancing the debt with Barclays wasn't an option. They called it in and in so doing took a lot of risk off their books. In June 2007 the club was technically insolvent, by somewhere between £80million and £90 million from memory. Why would anyone lend us anything in those circumstances? The credit crunch was big at the time as well and banks were crapping themselves. Ashley had to cough up. No one would lend much on our balance sheet. The main thing that has been achieved under Ashley is some sort of financial stability on a year on year basis but we are still insolvent if he calls his debt in. Thats why he has to guarantee not to do so every year, and that guarantee is recorded in the accounts. Your memory is off by a bit I think. Net liabilities were £16m. It's not ideal by any means, but many clubs are technically insolvent including the likes of Everton & Villa. It's actually mainly due to the under-valuation of most club's squads due to how the accountancy process works. Our squad in the last accounts for example was worth only £37m apparently. That's just over 1 Andy Carroll (it was actually valued at only £30m when we sold him). Transfermarkt, which while by no means perfect looks to have given most of our players reasonable valuations, has the squad valued at nearly £150m No way the banks are going to pull the plug just because of an accounting practice poorly suited to the business. 2 years later when we got relegated we had a £36m overdraft. Not a loan secured against income or assets, a plain old bank overdraft. I think you over-egg the club's inability to get any loans, and in fact was in the process of a refinancing deal when Ashley bought the club. Well hello again UV. I’ve written many words in debate with you on this subject over the years and stated my views. Nothing either of us has said has altered the other’s opinion and I don’t suppose it’s going to change now, but anyway: This idea that amortisation is some sort of accounting concept that doesn’t matter is just wrong. It’s rather like a football club saying that their profit and loss account shows that they have broken even over a two year period. Then someone points out that they have spent £40 million on players over that period and they just say “well we don’t count that”. Amortisation relates to real money that the club has shelled out for players. As far as your suggestion on valuing players is concerned, how subjective is that? You would have to factor in unpredictables such as fluctuations in form and injuries. And you only have to read this forum to see that there are vastly different opinions on how good and indeed how valuable certain players are. Your description of what happens during a due diligence process is indeed accurate. If we are to believe what has been reported (from Sir John Hall) Ashley acted rapidly as there was interest from a far eastern buyer – but they wanted to do due diligence which would take some time. Ashley was keen to do the deal so he went ahead and bought the Hall family out fairly quickly to close out the far eastern buyer. Shepherd and (I think) Chis Mort both stated that the bank’s change of ownership clause came as a surprise to Ashley. I agree with you it should not have. However you seem to think the clause was open knowledge to “any supporter who was interested in the clubs finances”. Where do you get that from? How would anyone know the conditions of a confidential document between the club and Barclays when it wasn’t disclosed in the accounts or was publicly available? And by the way there’s no need to get sick about discussion on the lack of due diligence. It isn’t cited as a defence of Ashley, it’s quite the opposite. As a result of your post I’ve gone back and had a look at the old accounts (thanks for the rewarding experience). The £80 to £90 million figure I quoted from my memory was based on the accumulated trading losses (which were in fact £92 million) and you are quite correct that the net liabilities at 30th June 2007 were around £16 million negative. Turning to the debt the bank was picking up interest at well over 7%. So why would they call it in if, as you say, the club was perfectly capable of servicing the debt? The truth has to be that they saw an opportunity to exit from a company that had racked up more than £90 million of trading losses and which gave them a higher risk exposure than they were prepared to tolerate. And since the club had accumulated those losses over several years and since amortisation spreads real costs over several years you cannot pass them off as being mostly down to a flawed accounting concept. Finally you are incorrect when you say that the £36 million ”old fashioned” bank overdraft was unsecured. Note 12 in the 2009 accounts quite clearly states that it was secured on assets belonging to the club. No one lends £36 million without security. Your final sentence is interesting . All we know is that they spent some money on a capital refinancing project that was aborted when the takeover took place. Given that the bank fairly hastily invoked the clause that allowed it to call in its loan (which was repaid in September) would you care to tell us more? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 We've been here many a time before and yet quayside in particular keeps banging this technically insolvent/would have done a Leeds/Portsmouth drum. Good post UV, as per. Just seen this. I don't think I have ever said the club would do a Leeds or a Portsmouth. You can check my posts if you really want to and I'll own up if I'm wrong I simply state that the club was in a financial mess when Ashley bought it and (many times) have tried to explain why. I genuinely do not know what would have happened if the club had carried on under its previous ownership other than to believe there were serious financial issues. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
UV Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 however, the loans he put in, some 140million worth were based on real debt at the bank, not accounting practises. The net debt was around £70m when he took over. It quickly doubled because the club started buying players for cash up front while still selling players in instalments. So even if there was little or no net transfer spend, the visible debt still grew, but the club had IOUs for the likes of Parker, Dyer, Milner, etc. Those IOUs were wiped out when we were relegated though (Ashley essentially bought the credit notes off the club) which is why the debt didn't rise when we were relegated. If anyone believes Shepherd didn't want out, they're mad IMO, he was the Chairman/CEO of a company that had spent £6Mill trying to find a buyer, so he must have sanctioned that spend, and yet we're supposed to think he didn't want to sell ! It just doesn't stack up. He played his sickbed attempt to leverage some more cash, into a "I never wanted to sell" story for the "Geordie nation's" consumption to near perfection. Where does this £6m figure come from and what was it spent on? Even though Shepherd was the chairman, the Halls were the major shareholders and could out vote him on anything like that anyway. If Shepherd wanted out, why did he keep buying more shares in the club and propose scrip dividends right up until the end? Why did Ashley buy Hall's shares on the QT without doing due diligence and without even consulting the other major shareholder if he also was keen to sell? If he was glad to be out why did he try to get a consortium together to buy the club back when Ashley put it up for sale when we were in the Championship? That really is some conspiracy theory you've got going there. If you're right, Shepherd's a far better actor/liar than I gave him credit for, and is a persistent bugger carrying on the pretence for years afterwards. It must be for all the love it gets him from supporters. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyeDubbleYoo Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Isn't the rate that the debt was increasing more important than the overall amount at the time? Was it sustainable, with the continuing losses we were making year-on-year? I know we've been through this a hundred times like, can barely be bothered to finish this sen Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Isn't the rate that the debt was increasing more important than the overall amount at the time? Was it sustainable, with the continuing losses we were making year-on-year? I know we've been through this a hundred times like, can barely be bothered to finish this sen UV will tell you it was all sustainable. I have serious doubts..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
UV Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Isn't the rate that the debt was increasing more important than the overall amount at the time? Was it sustainable, with the continuing losses we were making year-on-year? I know we've been through this a hundred times like, can barely be bothered to finish this sen Long story short: 06-07 - £10m net transfer spend, wages up by £10m = net debt went up up by £10m Ashley doesn't buy club 07-08 - TV revenues go up by £18m, maintain yearly average £10m net transfer spend, maintain wage bill = debt reduced Of course there are other factors involved and revenues are affected by results, but basically keep the wages in check & we'd have been fine IMO. None of this would have happened of course, because Hall would have sold up to Mansour in 08 and Keegan would be leading us to our 4th consecutive title. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanj Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 None of this would have happened of course, because Hall would have sold up to Mansour in 08 and Keegan would be leading us to our 4th consecutive title. Could you imagine? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 Isn't the rate that the debt was increasing more important than the overall amount at the time? Was it sustainable, with the continuing losses we were making year-on-year? I know we've been through this a hundred times like, can barely be bothered to finish this sen Long story short: 06-07 - £10m net transfer spend, wages up by £10m = net debt went up up by £10m Ashley doesn't buy club 07-08 - TV revenues go up by £18m, maintain yearly average £10m net transfer spend, maintain wage bill = debt reduced Of course there are other factors involved and revenues are affected by results, but basically keep the wages in check & we'd have been fine IMO. None of this would have happened of course, because Hall would have sold up to Mansour in 08 and Keegan would be leading us to our 4th consecutive title. Love the bit in bold I'll not comment on the rest, been there too many times...... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmymag Posted January 16, 2014 Share Posted January 16, 2014 None of this would have happened of course, because Hall would have sold up to Mansour in 08 and Keegan would be leading us to our 4th consecutive title. Could you imagine? I want to live in that alternative reality please! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorkie Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Could somebody explain to me the argument regarding Ashley 'converting the £129m debt into equity', as other PL owners have done? I've tried to get my head round it but it seems I'm a complete tard when it comes to economics/business. Debt and equity are both types of finance with different rights attached to each. If you consider Ashley and the club as two separate entities, and the club owes Ashley money. As he owns 100% of the club (ie. no minority interest) by cancelling the debt he doesn't lose the money owed to him, because the liabilities of the club are decreased when the debt is cancelled (thereby increasing the equity value of the club which is calculated as assets less liabilities). It's just moving money from one pocket to the other basically. Debt to equity can be convertible bonds and stuff like that as well, though - so instead of someone paying you back, you get increased ownership of them[/sorry if this comes across as prontonising] Okay, I think I get it. How would it help us if he converted the debt into equity, then? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beren Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Could somebody explain to me the argument regarding Ashley 'converting the £129m debt into equity', as other PL owners have done? I've tried to get my head round it but it seems I'm a complete tard when it comes to economics/business. Debt and equity are both types of finance with different rights attached to each. If you consider Ashley and the club as two separate entities, and the club owes Ashley money. As he owns 100% of the club (ie. no minority interest) by cancelling the debt he doesn't lose the money owed to him, because the liabilities of the club are decreased when the debt is cancelled (thereby increasing the equity value of the club which is calculated as assets less liabilities). It's just moving money from one pocket to the other basically. Debt to equity can be convertible bonds and stuff like that as well, though - so instead of someone paying you back, you get increased ownership of them[/sorry if this comes across as prontonising] Okay, I think I get it. How would it help us if he converted the debt into equity, then? Who is the 'us' in that sentence? If you mean the supporters/customers, not much. We have a stronger balance sheet / are more commercially attractive, but unless Ashley plans to sell it doesn't really further our aims in and of itself, as far as I can see. Your post was the first I've heard of it though so maybe I'm missing something. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beren Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Actually, it doesn't even really make us more commercially attractive now I think about it. I have no idea why he's done it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorkie Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Could somebody explain to me the argument regarding Ashley 'converting the £129m debt into equity', as other PL owners have done? I've tried to get my head round it but it seems I'm a complete tard when it comes to economics/business. Debt and equity are both types of finance with different rights attached to each. If you consider Ashley and the club as two separate entities, and the club owes Ashley money. As he owns 100% of the club (ie. no minority interest) by cancelling the debt he doesn't lose the money owed to him, because the liabilities of the club are decreased when the debt is cancelled (thereby increasing the equity value of the club which is calculated as assets less liabilities). It's just moving money from one pocket to the other basically. Debt to equity can be convertible bonds and stuff like that as well, though - so instead of someone paying you back, you get increased ownership of them[/sorry if this comes across as prontonising] Okay, I think I get it. How would it help us if he converted the debt into equity, then? Who is the 'us' in that sentence? If you mean the supporters/customers, not much. We have a stronger balance sheet / are more commercially attractive, but unless Ashley plans to sell it doesn't really further our aims in and of itself, as far as I can see. Your post was the first I've heard of it though so maybe I'm missing something. It was in the latest edition of True Faith. Ashley will have a job on trying to sell the club when it owes him £129m, so he could convert the debt into equity like Randy Lerner (I think?) did. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorkie Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 He hasn't done it, I don't think. Like I say, it was just an idea posed by True Faith. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LFEE Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Heard them discussing this on the radio this morning... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mike-ashley-stumps-the-city-with-debenhams-bet-9065718.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdckelly Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Heard them discussing this on the radio this morning... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mike-ashley-stumps-the-city-with-debenhams-bet-9065718.html is this what bored rich people do? put that money into some players and you might be a little more entertained! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Heard them discussing this on the radio this morning... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mike-ashley-stumps-the-city-with-debenhams-bet-9065718.html is this what bored rich people do? put that money into some players and you might be a little more entertained! Mike's version of a cheeky accy at the weekend Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
colinmk Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 Please give these players to a decent manager you fat cunt. Thanks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiresias Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jan/17/sports-direct-mike-ashley-newcastle-united-profile Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct and Newcastle United tycoon, is renowned for his various vices, from outrageous stakes at the roulette table to his memorable nights out drinking with football fans in the Bigg Market. But in Totteridge, the smart north London village where he lives, the billionaire is best known for something completely different. "He is famous for his Christmas lights," grimaces one disapproving friend. "He covers his house in them. Tourists come to see them. And it is not son et lumière." Last week the self-made billionaire again shocked the City with unorthodox business tactics – wheeling and dealing in tens of millions of Debenhams shares, banking a swift £5m profit and then sealing a complex deal that could give him a large stake in the ailing department store. His choice of festive home decor is just one of the many aspects of Ashley that don't seem to quite stack up. In the Square Mile he is regarded as a maverick, who so loves a punt that he once settled a disputed £200,000 legal bill via a game of spoof with his investment bankers (he lost) – yet conversely, he is quaintly obsessed with the detail of retail. He is a man who eschews personal publicity and interviews, prompting him to be once described as Britain's answer to the late Howard Hughes, though his love of a night out proves he is no recluse. And although Ashley burns electricity illuminating the exterior of his mansion, he has installed sensors that automatically switch off the office lights at Newcastle United's St James' Park home and sunk a well at the club's training ground to save on utility bills. It's not just the City that struggles to understand him. Ashley was brought up in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, and began his retailing career helping out in the shop in his Maidenhead squash club, after injury scuppered any hopes of making a living from the sport – although an associate says he's still an exceptionally good player. That led to him opening his own shop, in 1982, where friends and family used to help out, and over the past 31 years he has expanded the business into the UK's largest sports retailer with 400 stores. It is a FTSE-100 company, valued at £4.3bn – making Ashley's 64% stake worth £2.8bn. And all of that has been achieved by being brutally competitive. For instance, in 2000 Ashley was summoned to the Cheshire home of David Hughes, the chairman of the now-defunct Allsports chain, to discuss the pricing of a new Manchester United kit. There another northern businessman, Dave Whelan, the chairman of Wigan Athletic football club and then boss of the rival JJB chain, mistook the casually attired Ashley for the gardener, before compounding the insult by reportedly telling him: "There's a club in the north son, and you're not part of it." It is not clear if Whelan's approach proved the motivation, but Ashley's next move shocked the industry. He turned whistleblower and reported his rivals to the Office of Fair Trading for fixing the price of replica football shirts, which eventually led to dawn raids and multimillion-pound fines. If his rivals didn't realise then what type of character they were up against, they have since had plenty of time to reconsider. There is no longer a club in the north as its members have been crushed by "a canny and aggressive operator", as one observer puts it. Allsports and JJB have both died in the face of Ashley's relentless discounting and aggressive acquisition of brands, which has included turning the croquet and tennis set's beloved Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus, London, into a pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap bazaar. He has also snapped up sports brands such as Donnay, Lonsdale and Dunlop Slazenger, which once suggested quality, but are now stretched across ever-wider product ranges. As one sports fan put it ruefully: "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the British public's appetite to buy shite." Still, most people who have worked with Ashley seem to admire him, with almost all effusive about his talent as a retailer: "The most extraordinary instinctive businessman," gushes one, while another adds: "The way he describes it is that if Sports Direct was a Formula One car then he'd be the mechanic sitting in the garage tinkering. He has revolutionised the supply chain." Perhaps more surprising, though, is how well the man seems to be liked. "When I first met him I thought I might get a bit of a Philip Green," says one City figure. "But actually he is courteous and considerate. He asks a question once and he listens to the answer." There are also tales that contradict the nice-guy image that many of his advisers like to portray, including people who deal with Ashley's senior team finding them curiously reticent about expressing any opinions without prior permission from the boss. Some City advisers who have had the cheek to contact Ashley directly have been called and rebuked by his entourage for going straight to the top. But overall, his personality does seem to translate into lasting bonds between Ashley and those close to him – albeit with the possible exception of Linda Jerlmyr, his former wife with whom he had three children, and whom he paid £50m when they divorced in 2003. Ashley's need to surround himself with trusted friends occasionally produces some perplexing appointments – Newcastle fans are still struggling to comprehend the attraction of Joe Kinnear as a director of football – but the policy also means that Ashley's senior team repay his loyalty. Sports Direct's chief executive, David Forsey, has been with the business since 1984. Finance boss Bob Mellors, who retired on health grounds last month had been at the company since 2002, and was previously at accountant Eacott Worrall where Sports Direct first became a client in 1982. Then there is Ashley's brother John, who is head of IT and joined company in 1989. They run the operation from an industrial estate in Shirebrook, on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border, where on Monday evenings they gather for business dinners at a local pub, before retiring to one of the houses the company has bought in the area. The latest addition to this inner circle is Jeff Blue, who as a banker at Merrill Lynch worked on the Sports Direct flotation in 2007, before joining the Icelandic investor Baugur. In a move that now looks like a practice run, Baugur snapped up a near-5% stake in Debenhams days after Blue joined. Blue had previously presided over the flotation of the department store (also in 2007) while at Merrill Lynch – meaning that all sorts of theories are circulating the City about Ashley's strategy for Debenhams. Some suggest a bid, others that Ashley wants to sell his fashion brands – such as Firetrap – in the department store. There have been reports that he wants to supply celebrity-fronted sports brands to Debenhams, while rivals point out that the tycoon is always looking at ways of getting his hands on more Nike and Adidas stock, because the giant brands restrict his supply: "He is Adidas and Nike's largest customer in the UK, but they won't supply him as much as he wants. So he buys it from other people. For him it is not about price, it is about receiving supply." Whatever Ashley's plan, Debenhams' directors are unlikely to be left alone. One rival who found Ashley on his share register explains: "His modus operandi is pretty pitiful. You meet, when he'll always be eating or drinking something, but he'll be pretty courteous. You shake hands and agree on the next steps. And then the next day you read an attack on yourself in the media. "Some people are attack dogs to your face, which is easier to read. He was far nicer in person than you'd expect. Afterwards, he is far nastier." Potted profile Born: 9 September 1964 Career: Left school at 16 as a county-level squash player, but injury ruined any chance of going professional. Opened first sports shop in Maidenhead in 1982, followed by others in and around London, and became Sports Direct. High point: Now. Sports Direct shares are trading at an all-time high – more than 20 times higher than in 2008, when the City did not trust the way he was running the company. As one observer puts it: "He has been cleverer than the City." Low point: The two years after the 2007 flotation when shares slumped by 90% after corporate governance worriesand Newcastle United fans were demanding that he sell the club. What he says: "You want me out [of Newcastle]. That is what I am now trying to do, but it won't happen overnight and it may not happen at all if a buyer does not come in." What they say: "We hope Mike Ashley will sit down with Unite to discuss how the treatment of workers at Sports Direct can be improved, after they have made the business such a success." – Annmarie Kilcline, regional secretary at Unite, after it emerged that 90% of Sports Direct staff were on zero-hours contracts. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skeletor Posted January 18, 2014 Share Posted January 18, 2014 Please give these players to a decent manager you fat cunt. Thanks. He's trying to give Cabaye to a decent manager. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chopey Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 apparently there's a mega rich Chinese bloke coming to England this week looking to buy a club I wonder ..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Roger Kint Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 apparently there's a mega rich Chinese bloke coming to England this week looking to buy a club I wonder ..... Opposite end of England clearly Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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