Michael James Wallace Ashley (born 9 September 1964) is a British retail entrepreneur and chief executive of Frasers Group Plc (formerly Sports Direct International). He owned the Newcastle United football club between 2007 and 2021. According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2021, Ashley is the 61st richest person in the UK with an estimated net worth of £2.718 billion. In August 2021, Ashley announced that he intended to step down as CEO of Frasers Group Plc in May 2022, but would remain a director of the main Board.
Early life
Ashley was born in Walsall in the West Midlands in 1964 and grew up in Burnham. His father was a manager at a food distribution depot. Ashley was educated at Burnham Grammar School in Burnham, Buckinghamshire and left school at 16 to become a county-level squash player. After an injury, he worked as a county-level squash coach.
Entrepreneurship
In 1982, at age 18, he opened his first sport and ski shop in Maidenhead with a £10,000 () loan from his family. The chain quickly expanded in and around London and in the late 1990s, Ashley rebranded the chain as Sports Soccer. He was a sole trader and was not required to file accounts at Companies House; Sports Soccer became a limited liability company in 1999. Ashley hired Merrill Lynch for an initial public offering in November 2006 and the group was initially valued at up to £2.5bn ahead of the flotation on the London Stock Exchange.
The first brand Ashley added to his portfolio was Donnay Sports, followed by Dunlop Slazenger in February 2003, which he purchased for £40 million. He acquired Karrimor in March 2003 and later purchased Kangol for £10 million. Ashley took a £9 million stake and signed a long-term deal with Umbro. In mid-2006, he took a 25% stake in Matalan and installed mezzanine floors in larger Matalan stores for Sports World outlets. He also had a 29.4% stake in Blacks Leisure Group, owner of Millets and Mambo, and in 2005 purchased 9% stake in JJB Sports and 19% stake in JD Sports. In 2006, it overtook JJB Sports as the UK's largest sportswear retailer. He also owns Lonsdale. In 2019, there were more than 400 Sports World, Lillywhites, and Gilesports stores in the United Kingdom and employed more than 20,000 people across the UK, Ireland, Belgium and Slovenia.
Sports Direct acquired a 38.5% stake in retailer Game Digital and, in June 2019, Ashley placed a £52 million bid to buy The Times. In February 2020, he bought a 12.5% stake in Mulberry and, in August, his Fraser Group purchased assets from DW Sports Fitness in a deal worth up to £44 million. The group initially bought 46 leisure clubs and 31 retail outlets from DW Sports Fitness for £37 million to merge with its own business. In February 2023, it was announced that he was in advanced negotiations to buy The Mall Luton and Overgate Centre for a combined total of £100m.
In 2000, Ashley gave the Office of Fair Trading evidence of business meetings held by sports retailers to fix the price of football shirts. At a meeting held at Allsports' chairman David Hughes' home in Cheshire, Dave Whelan reportedly told Ashley: "There's a club in the north, son, and you're not part of it." On 26 July 2017, Ashley won a high court dispute against investment banker Jeffrey Blue, who alleged that during a "night of heavy drinking" at the Horse and Groom pub in London, Ashley agreed to pay Blue £15 million if Sport Direct's shares doubled to £8. The Justice ruled that no-one would have thought that what Ashley said was serious. In March 2020, Ashley and Sports Direct were criticised after an announcement that they would stay open despite increased government restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. A few days later, they announced that they would be closing until given the green light to reopen by the government.