Betaville

Is Fosun about to do a Mike Ashley with Thomas Cook?

The collapse of Debenhams wasn't exactly Mike Ashley's finest hour.

The owner of Newcastle United Football Club lost £150 million on the 29.9pc equity stake he built over several years after being outmanouvered by the credit funds and the company ahead of a financial restructuring.

Now, though, it would appear Fosun - the Chinese conglomerate led by Guo Guangchang, dubbed China's Warren Buffett - is following a similar path to maverick Mike...

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Mike Ashley said to be in the frame to buy...everything - Part 6

Is it Mike Ashley day, today?

The maverick entrepreneur appears to making on-the-record comments everywhere this morning about everything from Arcadia to Debenhams.

To be fair, it was Deidre Hipwell who dug out some great quotes from Ashley (probably yesterday) about Sir Philip Green's Arcadia that made a superlative splash in The Times business section. Below is the link:..

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Mike Ashley said to be in the frame to buy...everything - Part 5

Tucked away in the Evening Standard's business section is a story from Laura Onita about how Mike Ashley's holding company has organised a £907 million revolving credit facility.

It was good a spot in the Mash Holdings's Companies House filings from the up-and-coming hackette and got Betaville pondering on why the maverick entrepreneur had organised such a big credit line...

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Mike Ashley said to be in the frame to buy...everything - Part 4

Is anybody else wondering why Mike Ashley changed his mind about trying to buy Patisserie Valerie in the space of 48 hours?

The whole idea of Ashley buying the coffee chain seemed rather bizarre in the first place. Trainers, tracksuits and, er, French-themed croissant bars...

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Mike Ashley said to be in the frame to buy...everything - Part 3

Take a bow Lucy White of the Daily Mail for completing nailing the "Mike Ashley to bid for Patisserie Valerie" story.

The business section of the Daily Mail splashed on the Lucy's scoop a couple of weeks ago. Below is a link to her original piece:..

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Sunday review on a Monday - Marks & Spencer, Mike Ashley and Sir Philip Green

My old chum Neil "Neily" Craven at the Mail on Sunday landed a great follow up to his scoop last weekend about Marks & Spencer's tie up with online grocer Ocado.

Yesterday's piece had the nitty gritty detail about the deal, so if your still interested I have pasted the link below:..

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Mike Ashley said to be in the frame to buy...everything - Part 2

So, the venerable Financial Times have had a good stab at looking into why maverick Mike Ashley is hoovering up every distressed retailer in sight.

Below is a link to the excellent piece in today's hard copy edition.

https://www.ft.com/content/bfcf7bc4-2633-11e9-b329-c7e6ceb5ffdf

However, Betaville isn't 100pc convinced the FT have got to the bottom of the whole story...

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Sunday review - Mike Ashley, Peter Hargreaves and one of Betaville's former employers...

Once you get past the acres of Brexit coverage there were some decent business jackanories knocking about in the Sunday papers today.

One story that caught Betaville's eye was a tucked away on page 2 of the Mail on Sunday's business section about how Mike Ashley is planning to hire new PR "experts" to look after his "growing retail group". Below is a link to Neil Craven's article:..

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Sunday review - the Debenhams/Ashley conundrum.

Neil Craven, a colleague over at the Mail on Sunday's business section, landed a cracking tale this weekend about ailing department store Debenhams...

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Nick Train or Mike Ashley - who are you more likely to believe?

There is an interesting juxtaposition of stories/threats on the front page of the excellent business section of The Times today...

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Quelle Surprise: Mike Ashley buys House of Fraser...

The Kleinmanator of Sky News is claiming he had the scoop about Mike Ashley buying House of Fraser out of administration. I guess that may be a valid claim amid his minute by minute scoopage (er, or is it coverage?) of the fast moving situation...

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The leaving party, the Premier League football club and the £220 million takeover bid...

Hat tip to Russell Lynch. Betaville stumbled across the hack's cracking scoop in today's Evening Standard business section about a Turkish tycoon's £220 million potential bid for Newcastle United Football Club on the way to, ironically, a leaving party for a hackette that's about to join the great newspaper.

Here is a link to Lynch's piece in the Evening Standard:..

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Portuguese consortium said to still be working on BHS despite closure - part 2

It would appear Mike Ashley isn't the only bidder still trying to get hold of BHS - or parts of it, at least.

Well-placed sources have told me the Portuguese consortium, led by Greg Tufnell (Phil Tufnell's brother) and backed by the dos Santos family, was also contacted by administrators on Sunday about whether it would still be interested in buying BHS...

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