ToonArmy1892 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 There are a few other sites saying he is ready to lower his asking price aswell FWIW. I want to believe. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilson Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 I want to believe. Don't. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sho Time Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 There are a few other sites saying he is ready to lower his asking price aswell FWIW. Reeks even more of Bishop then. They're absolutely desperate for this to blow over. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonArmy1892 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 There are a few other sites saying he is ready to lower his asking price aswell FWIW. Reeks even more of Bishop then. They're absolutely desperate for this to blow over. Either way, there's either something in it or if it's bullshit there's a reason they feel the need to put these things out, it's all good. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonArmy1892 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 Do they really think these articles will stop people protesting, they are bigger fools than i thought if so, it is well past that point now, like i said before a sniff of an end game will probably galvanise our support even more now. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dokko Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 There are a few other sites saying he is ready to lower his asking price aswell FWIW. Reeks even more of Bishop then. They're absolutely desperate for this to blow over. Either way, there's either something in it or if it's bullshit there's a reason they feel the need to put these things out, it's all good. Agreed Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dokko Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 Do they really think these articles will stop people protesting, they are bigger fools than i thought if so, it is well past that point now, like i said before a sniff of an end game will probably galvanise our support even more now. Again agreed. It just builds up hope and in turn the crowds will keep turning the screws. It certainly won't stop them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_R Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 It's like they are taunting us. First thing I noticed was lack of any quotes. Like a lack of quotes makes any difference. He's publicly stated he wants to sell us before, multiple times, with quotes from his own mouth. He's a pathological liar. This "blows over" the day we're sold, and not a single second before. At that point he can go live whatever life he wants and I'll pay him no further heed, but until that point I'll do everything within my admittedly small remit to annoy or disrupt him, his cronies, and his business interests. I realise my small remit is indeed small, but there's tens of thousands of us and together we can have a serious impact on his ability to trade and operate in society on any level. The only way he'll ever sell is if we're more trouble than we're worth, but I genuinely believe that's within our hands. We've just got to keep turning the screw. Individually, we're all responsible for not letting up and then collectively the pressure will tell. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odear Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 They’ve literally done everything at this stage. We know their play book so now that they’ve come full circle and are trying the same old shit that might have worked before, it’s simply not working now. Even the most dim witted of supporters can see everything plain as day. I think the next logical step will be for Ashley to go separate ways with Bishop and hire someone even worse. He’s getting it from all angles now. The club, SD and now HoF. He’s incredibly thin skinned when it comes to his businesses so he won’t let it go on like this for much longer. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonArmy1892 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 https://mobile.twitter.com/MoneyMikeAshley/status/1038881203988979712 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Duper Branko Strupar Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 He’s getting it from all angles - nice! “Mr Ashley is in danger of sounding like a petulant infant who thinks shareholders have a duty to him.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/addressing-shareholders-mike-ashley-risks-sounding-like-a-spoilt-brat-8gp5hcvrw Anyone able to paste this in full? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
geordiedean Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 i don't for one minute believe that the club has ever been up for sale in the 11 years since he bought it. Its his way of appeasing the idiots amongst us who cant see through the lying bastard and his cronies If the club was genuinely up for sale someone would have taken it on in 10 years as even the most astute businessman can see the potential and possibilities of taking the club on. With good structured investment the club and brand can be bigger than what Manchester city have become since Mansour took over I have no doubt about that Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kimbo Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 The club won't be up for sale in any meaningful way unless sports direct starts tanking and he needs to do it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jarrovianmag Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 i don't for one minute believe that the club has ever been up for sale in the 11 years since he bought it. Its his way of appeasing the idiots amongst us who cant see through the lying bastard and his cronies If the club was genuinely up for sale someone would have taken it on in 10 years as even the most astute businessman can see the potential and possibilities of taking the club on. With good structured investment the club and brand can be bigger than what Manchester city have become since Mansour took over I have no doubt about that They were after us pre city. But Ashley Lambias and Wise made fools of themselves , got pissed etc and he demanded more cash than they thought was worth Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToonArmy1892 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 He’s getting it from all angles - nice! “Mr Ashley is in danger of sounding like a petulant infant who thinks shareholders have a duty to him.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/addressing-shareholders-mike-ashley-risks-sounding-like-a-spoilt-brat-8gp5hcvrw Anyone able to paste this in full? Not me but i read it in the paper, bloke rips into him Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 Listed companies’ communications with shareholders are a delicate art, and there have been examples of both the very best and the very worst in the past few days. Item one is Mike Ashley’s extraordinary statement titled: “Sports Direct and Mike Ashley stabbed in the back by shareholders”. There is so much wrong with it, it’s hard to know where to begin. The basic discourtesy of using the official stock market news service to slag off the company’s owners is unorthodox to put it at its kindest. There’s also the frustrating vagueness. Mr Ashley throws his toys out of the pram for six paragraphs but we still don’t quite know what he is complaining about. Outside shareholders were guilty of “hounding” the former chairman Keith Hellawell, he says. Mr Hellawell is the former chief constable and drugs tsar who abruptly resigned as chairman a few hours before the annual meeting last week. The speculation is that the company had counted the proxies and knew he would have to go, but allowed him to resign to spare his blushes. When does the reasonable right of the owners to have a say in who should chair their company count as “hounding”? If Mr Ashley has any evidence of unreasonable demands by investors, he needs to supply it. Then there are the boastful claims backed by little or no evidence. Mr Ashley’s “tireless” work to build bridges with the City has been “widely recognised”, he says. By who? He wasn’t saying, though this newspaper has quoted some of his supporters. Yesterday his PR advisers were still citing research from the Reputation Institute, which in June gave the company positive reviews. Since then the same organisation has named Sports Direct as the retailer with the worst reputation in the UK. There’s also the trick of implying investors are too obsessed with process and boxticking to appreciate the flair of genuine wealth creators. “It is blatantly apparent that true entrepreneurs will never be accepted in the public arena,” Mr Ashley wails. Savour that phrase “true entrepreneurs”. Mr Ashley seems to believe he is one of the elite, on a different level to the functionaries and bureaucrats who run other listed companies. The implication is that he shouldn’t be hamstrung by the petty rules and norms expected of others. This was a low blow. Institutional investors are aware that their concern for good governance could go too far and stifle risk-taking and innovation. Fellow entrepreneur Luke Johnson tweeted that, while the Ashley statement was “a bit bonkers”, the “circus” of listed company obligations was driving companies off the market. But Mr Ashley has now had more than 11 years in charge of Sports Direct as a listed company to prove his approach works, and the results are pedestrian. Outside investors bought more than £900 million worth of Sports Direct shares in the flotation of February 2007, paying 300p per share. Today they change hands at 352p. That’s not terrible. Marks & Spencer is down 59 per cent over the same period. Sports Direct exactly matches the 17 per cent improvement in the FTSE 100 over that period. But it’s not very impressive either. Next is up by 156 per cent and Mr Ashley’s arch-rival JD Sports is up by more than 2,300 per cent. Mr Ashley has made fabulous returns for himself and his senior colleagues. For others? Less so. According to his spokesman: “Sports Direct is successfully investing in the high street and elsewhere, at a time when some other retailers are sadly going bust.” Still, it seems a pretty meagre performance for a true entrepreneur, not a mere common-or-garden one. Finally, there’s the obtuseness (or deliberate provocation?) of delivering a complaint in a manner that seems designed to inflame the anxieties of shareholders. They are worried that Mr Ashley, the 61.5 per cent majority shareholder, is not being properly held to account by his board and runs the business as his personal fiefdom — whether by employing family members, leaving key posts unfilled, or by indulging in the distraction of betting company cash on other retailers. Lastly, his personal Exocet, issued in the name of Sports Direct, gives no indication of whether the new chairman, David Daly, has seen it, let alone approved it. That illustrates why they are right to be worried. Thankfully, there is a better way to communicate with shareholders. We saw it last week in a speech delivered by Sir Howard Davies, the chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland, a company even less popular with shareholders. Sir Howard told it straight. RBS had lost an unbelievable £130 billion in write-offs, fines and compensation payments since the crisis. He was candid. RBS still has reputation problems, pointing to the recent Competition & Markets Authority ranking of high street banks, which put RBS at the bottom of the league. He was disarmingly self-critical. Not many chairmen would rootle out a company statement from 2009 — which everyone had forgotten — to illustrate how deluded RBS was at the time. The cost of being forced by the EU to sell off a modest chunk of its small business lending division, it said then, was “unlikely to be material”. The bill so far? About £3.2 billion. He was insightful. Even now, people don’t understand quite what a basket case the RBS subsidiary Ulster Bank was, as it squirted out loans at a prodigious rate. And Sir Howard was more than happy to talk about competitors and his company’s share price, two subjects chairman are notoriously reluctant to grapple with. RBS has many issues still to bottom out, not least the toxic GRG affair, but investor relations is not one of them. He sounded like a grown-up, one who recognises his duty to shareholders, in his case British taxpayers, and empathises. Mr Ashley is in danger of sounding like a petulant infant who thinks shareholders have a duty to him. Patrick Hosking is Financial Editor of The Times Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Geordie Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 The piece from the Gazette reeks of Keith Bishop and like others, I don't believe it at all. What it does show is that the protests are working. This is why the likes of The Magpie Group and AshleyOut must keep fighting on. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
paddydog Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 Oof, that Times article is a proper condemnation of Ashley. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
geordiedean Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 Oof, that Times article is a proper condemnation of Ashley. Many Many people are starting to get wise to exactly what type of petulant cunt this fella really is both in business and in his reign as our owner the fucker is starting to be a figure of hate in more ways than just with our fanbase. Long may it continue Id be as happy as a kid in a candy to shop to see this cunt lose everything and end up destitute with only his shitty white shirt and jeans for company Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bimpy474 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 The piece from the Gazette reeks of Keith Bishop and like others, I don't believe it at all. What it does show is that the protests are working. This is why the likes of The Magpie Group and AshleyOut must keep fighting on. Aye it's the make us back off, total made up PR bollocks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyeDubbleYoo Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 The piece from the Gazette reeks of Keith Bishop and like others, I don't believe it at all. What it does show is that the protests are working. This is why the likes of The Magpie Group and AshleyOut must keep fighting on. Aye it's the make us back off, total made up PR bollocks. Best case, it's PR to attract a buyer back. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NG32 Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 The piece from the Gazette reeks of Keith Bishop and like others, I don't believe it at all. What it does show is that the protests are working. This is why the likes of The Magpie Group and AshleyOut must keep fighting on. Aye it's the make us back off, total made up PR bollocks. Best case, it's PR to attract a buyer back. Surely he would just pick up the phone? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyeDubbleYoo Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 The piece from the Gazette reeks of Keith Bishop and like others, I don't believe it at all. What it does show is that the protests are working. This is why the likes of The Magpie Group and AshleyOut must keep fighting on. Aye it's the make us back off, total made up PR bollocks. Best case, it's PR to attract a buyer back. Surely he would just pick up the phone? I did say best case That said, we do seem to believe he does this spinning regularly, so it's just about possible. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRon Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 300M asking price + loan 127M + he wants to keep his advertisments rights. "sure" he wants to sell... He's so full of shit like. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minhosa Posted September 18, 2018 Share Posted September 18, 2018 300M asking price + loan 127M + he wants to keep his advertisments rights. "sure" he wants to sell... + Taking on an active HMRC Enquiry and the associated liability and legal costs + A creaking infrastructure crying out for investment. You're still asking north of £500m in reality. That's not 'up for sale', that's taking the piss. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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