Frasers Group’s Mike Ashley has called Boohoo “desperate” after the ailing fast fashion retailer promoted Debenhams boss Dan Finley to chief executive instead of relenting to his demands to take the hotseat.
Following Finley’s appointment last week, Ashley told The Sunday Times in an email: “Independent shareholders be warned, desperate people do desperate things.”
Last month Frasers, which holds a 27% stake in the online fashion retailer, published a letter attacking Boohoo’s management and demanding that Ashley be appointed as a replacement for John Lyttle, the retailer’s outgoing CEO.
It wrote: “In the face of persistent failure by the board to meaningfully engage on this subject…Frasers has been left with no option but to take action itself in order to provide a solution to Boohoo’s leadership crisis.”
The retail giant said that Boohoo needed to “urgently needs to address the management of its business” and highlighted the fashion retailer’s “abysmal performance and share price collapse”.
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