Mike Ashley has admitted he was behind covert footage that helped trigger the downfall of former JD Sports executive chair Peter Cowgill.
The Sports Direct founder said associates working for him recorded the 2021 footage of Cowgill meeting Barry Bown, then boss of Footasylum, while JD Sports was in the process of acquiring the footwear retailer.
The footage, which showed the pair speaking in a car, was later seen by the Sunday Times and prompted scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority. JD Sports and Footasylum were under strict rules preventing the sharing of commercially sensitive information during the takeover process.
The regulator went on to fine JD Sports and Footasylum almost £5m, while Cowgill ultimately left the sportswear giant in 2022.
Ashley confirmed his involvement in an interview with the Financial Times, saying he was not “hiding from the fact” that he wanted to bring down Cowgill.
“He shouldn’t have been in the car park and maybe I shouldn’t have been in the bushes,” Ashley said, later confirming that people in his employ had recorded the footage.
The revelation reignites one of British retail’s most high-profile rivalries, with Ashley’s Frasers Group and JD Sports having long competed across sportswear and fashion.
Cowgill previously suggested the footage had been taken on behalf of a “key competitor”, saying he was concerned that a rival had been willing to “go to those lengths”.
Ashley, who stepped down as Frasers Group chief executive in 2022 but remains its controlling shareholder, told the FT that many of the disputes in his career had been driven by a sense of fairness.
“I’m not Mary Poppins – when you get in a fight with me, I’ll come back at you,” he said. “But I’m not devil incarnate.”
The billionaire, who built Sports Direct from a single Maidenhead store into the retail group now behind House of Fraser, Flannels, Evans Cycles and Jack Wills, remains one of the UK high street’s most influential and controversial figures.
JD Sports eventually sold Footasylum after the CMA blocked the £90m takeover. City AM reported that the footage showed Bown and Cowgill sitting in the front seats of a black Mercedes during the controversial meeting.
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