Nick Goodway: Mike Ashley's backers must bear some blame

Good words from the Investor Forum today over Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct.

It calls for a fully independent report into all of the company’s corporate governance framework to “rebuild the confidence of shareholders and wider stakeholders”.

It adds that shareholders have been talking to Sports Direct since “soon after its initial public offering in 2007”.

So those, presumably, are the same shareholders who bought shares in that listing at 300p. They knew then what Ashley was like, and what he thinks of the City. They bought the shares because they were backing an entrepreneur, just as investors did when they first bought shares in Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP or Ivan Glasenberg’s Glencore.

It was the greedy wish to ride on the coat-tails of Ashley’s retail skills that allowed them to turn a blind eye to his corporate governance then.

So is it he or they who are to blame when, nine years on, the shares stand just 5p above the float price?