Mulberry’s owner rejects increased £111m bid from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group

Majority owner, Challice, says it has no interest in selling shares to group that already owns 37% of luxury brand

The owner of the Mulberry fashion brand has rejected an increased £111m bid from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group to buy the British luxury handbag maker, saying it has “no interest” in selling its shares.

Challice, a group controlled by Singaporean entrepreneur Christina Ong and her husband, Ong Beng Seng, which owns 56% of Mulberry – giving it the power to block any bid – called on Frasers to ditch plans to take over, saying it came at an “inopportune time” for the struggling brand.

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Frasers Group seeks approval for Mike Ashley to cash in £585m in share buyback

Company wants investors’ permission to buy billionaire’s shares in private deal at market price at the time

Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group is seeking approval for the billionaire entrepreneur to cash in £585m of shares which could be bought back by the company in a private deal.

Under the plan, the stock market-listed retail group said it wanted permission from shareholders to buy back the shares privately from Ashley – in one or several transactions – at the market price at the time.

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Frasers builds 5% stake in Asos to become fourth-largest investor

Mike Ashley’s increased holding comes after online retailer reported slowing sales and full-year loss

The billionaire retailer Mike Ashley has built up a stake of more than 5% in the online fashion retailer Asos.

His fashion and sportswear retailer Frasers Group informed Asos on Friday that it had become one of the company’s most signifiant shareholders.

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The Saudi takeover of Newcastle United is a symptom of England’s political failures | David Goldblatt

We shouldn’t single out football fans: the country has long since made its peace with the power of capital, whatever its origins

Football, no longer merely the national game, is England’s political theatre. The way in which the spasm of fan protest stopped the European Super League in its tracks in April, and which the prime minister erroneously claimed as his own victory, spoke to both a residual – if often dormant – public sense of justice and communitarianism, and the shamelessness of our snake-skinned political conversation. The open conflict between the England men’s team, the Conservative government and a section of the England fanbase over taking the knee at Euro 2020 was a battle over who gets to define the terms of our debate over structural racism. Now, the long anticipated sale of Newcastle United to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund points to England’s practically and morally diminished place in the world, and the roads that have taken us there.

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia is not the first politician to take an interest in Newcastle United. In the early 1990s, Tony Blair, then leader of the opposition, was busy burnishing his local credentials by declaring his fidelity to the team, decrying Andy Cole’s transfer to Manchester United in the Sun, and playing keepy-uppy with Kevin Keegan. Like Blair, Newcastle United were the coming thing. After four decades without a trophy, but now under the new ownership of Sir John Hall, both a Thatcherite property developer and an advocate for regional government and regeneration in the north-east, Keegan’s Newcastle were challenging for the Premiership title and playing fabulous football to raging full houses. In 1996 Alan Shearer arrived, on a then recored transfer fee, and declared to a delirious crowd that he was still “the son of a sheet-metal worker”. One could have been forgiven for thinking that, after the hammer blows of 17 years of Thatcherism, there was hope for an English working class and regional revival.

David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football and The Game of Our Lives

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Incoming boss of Sports Direct owner to get £100m payout if he doubles share price

New chief executive Michael Murray, 31, who is Mike Ashley’s future son-in-law, has till 2025 to achieve target

The incoming 31-year-old boss of Sports Direct owner Frasers Group could be handed shares worth more than £100m if he more than doubles its share price.

The company, which also owns the House of Fraser department stores and the designer fashion chain Flannels, revealed the bumper potential payout on Wednesday night, weeks after it announced that Michael Murray would be taking over from his future father-in-law, Mike Ashley, next spring.

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