Hostile footing
British billionaire Ashley bids low and swings hard at Accent.
Good morning.
Mike Ashley has never been one to pay retail. And the British billionaire — House of Fraser owner and erstwhile Newcastle United custodian — was not going to start now.
Frasers lobbed 65¢ a share for the rest of Accent (bang on the last close and well under the 90¢-plus he paid Brett Blundy for his first stake in 2024) to effectively average down on his own position.
The bidder’s statement skips the pleasantries: it wants chairman Lawrence Myers gone, calls Accent’s dividend neither “sustainable nor prudent”, and lands while the CEO sits under an insider-trading probe. It’s vintage Ashley, and the ASX’s first real taste of it.
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