This column has consistently stood up for Mike Ashley, even when the lonesome billionaire’s notions of corporate governance at Sports Direct and staff welfare at its Shirebrook warehouse made that a challenging position to sustain — not to mention his troubled ownership of Newcastle United. Ashley has grown his core business over 35 years from one outlet in Maidenhead to a remarkably robust retail empire by doing the detail, taking shrewd bets and swallowing competitors. Reportedly genial in private, he has always been uncomfortable in public and has had to contend with a peculiar form of British snobbery, which is that we expect our self-made tycoons to evolve into toffs (like the late British Airways chairman Lord King, a former car salesman turned master of foxhounds) rather than, as Ashley seems to prefer, continuing to project the image of a sweaty football fan out for a rumble.
Some years ago I suggested he start the process of shifting upmarket by bidding for Harrods — but perhaps wisely he avoided tangling with its Qatari owners. Instead he has stepped in with a knockdown £90 million rescue bid for the failing 59-store House of Fraser chain, with the intention of making it ‘the Harrods of the high street’ and saving as many as possible of its 17,000 jobs. In the current collapse of bricks-and-mortar retailing, some say that’s a crazy aspiration. The army of Ashley haters (a coalition of Labour MPs, Newcastle fans and the City establishment) will dance with glee if it all goes the way of BHS. But if anyone can offer shoppers a lively new experience in House of Fraser’s beached-whale town-centre stores it is Mike Ashley. I hope his reward is a peerage: Lord Shirebrook has a ring to it.
Black swan?
The award by a Californian court of $289 million in damages to Dewayne Johnson, a groundsman who claimed the weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer, has the makings of what investment pessimists call a ‘black swan’: an unforeseen event with extreme consequences.
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