in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, in 1964, Ashley left school at 16 with no qualifications. His first ambition wasn’t retail but squash, and he competed at county level before injury cut his dreams short. Instead, at 18, he borrowed £10,000 from his parents and opened a sports shop in Maidenhead, Berkshire. Fast-forward to February 2007, and he took his company public at a valuation of £2.5 billion, pocketing US$1.8 billion from the IPO. To celebrate, he bought one of the UK’s biggest football clubs, Newcastle United, for around £135 million. Building Frasers – A kingdom of distressed assets Ashley’s strategy has always favoured the opportunistic over the orthodox. His group – renamed Frasers Group in 2019, following his acquisition of department store chain House of Fraser – now spans roughly 1,500 stores across 20 countries, employing around 30,000 people. The portfolio is eclectic: sofas, luxury casualwear, gyms, personal finance, and a revolving door of stakes in publicly listed companies including ASOS, Mulberry, Currys, Hugo Boss and Marks Electrical. In 2022, Ashley stepped down as CEO and handed the executive reins to his son-in-law, Michael Murray, then just 33, who was offered a £100 million bonus tied to the company’s share price. Ashley retains a 73 per cent stake in Frasers and, by many accounts – denied by the company – continues to call the shots behind the scenes. The surveillance scandal and the “fairness” defence For all his commercial success, Ashley is no stranger to controversy. His most startling admission came when he acknowledged arranging for surveillance footage to be captured of rival Peter Cowgill, then chair of JD Sports, in a car park in 2021 – footage that triggered a regulatory investigation and ultimately led to Cowgill’s ouster and fines of almost £5 million against JD Sports and Footasylum. Ashley told the Financial Times: “Cowgill shouldn’t have been in the car park, and maybe I shouldn’t have been in the bushes”. He has also faced scrutiny over labour practices, after admitting in 2016 that warehouse workers were paid below minimum wage. Yet Ashley frames his combativeness through the lens of fairness. “I’m not Mary Poppins – when you get in a fight with me, I’ll come back at you. But I’m not devil incarnate,” he told the Financial Times. The Australian play His latest manoeuvre has brought Ashley to Australian shores. Through Barrenjoey Capital, Frasers Group has offered 65 cents a share – around $390.8 million – to acquire the remaining stake in Accent Group, the ASX-listed retailer behind Hype DC, Nude Lucy and Style Runner, among others. Ashley already holds 22.9 per cent of Accent, a position built during the pair’s partnership to roll out Sports Direct stores in Australia. The relationship has soured, with Ashley reportedly frustrated by Accent’s underperformance. Simultaneously, Frasers – which already owns just over a quarter of Hugo Boss – has tabled a €1.98 billion offer for the German luxury house. Over four decades, Ashley has built a reputation as a relentless deal-maker whose motives are rarely transparent and whose methods are frequently unconventional. Whether these latest bids succeed or not, one thing is certain: Mike Ashley is never boring.