According to the 10th major Billionaire in The United Kingdom, Michael Ashley that in his school days when he used to dream for becoming a striving as a Squash Player, he never thought that someday his name would come up with a ‘silver-line’ marking of being the 318th Billionaire in the World and one of the majors in the UK. Incidentally, the 16 years boy who started as a squash player had to discontinue playing Squash due to a major accident and injury.
Though, subsequently he performed as a coach as country level for a few days, but from earlier 80s he thought of entering into Sports and Ski shopping retail business. To begin his project, he took a loan of £10,000 from one of his family members and founded his first shop Sports Direct chain in Shire- brook, Mansfield. Seeing the growing demand of popularity of his sports products, he planned to open some more stores in and around London.
Michael Ashley became the STAR business person once he bought the Newcastle, the world famous European club paying £135 roughly and became its owner. To meet the fast growing demand of sports products and attires, the name of Sports Direct International Plc became the top liked sports products retail chain in entire Europe whilst the company opened above 400 outlets in different places in the UK, Belgium, Slovenia and Ireland. The company is headquartered in SHIREBROOK, Mansfield as well as in Derbyshire and employs more than 20000 who are working different stores.
Michael’s full name is Michael James Wallace Mike Ashley; however, he is widely known and called by the name Mike or Michael Ashley. Apart from being a promising sports retail business player, the ways that helped Michael to become a billionaire is his operation as a takeover tycoon as well, buying partnership stakes of major brands. In his acquisition process, some of the remarkable projects include brand like Dunlop Slazenger brand for £40 million in 2003, the famed Gear Manufacturing enterprise KARRIMOR Boxing brand Lonsdale, UMBRO, KANGOL and DONNAY.
Michael bought 29.4% share in Blacks Leisure Enterprises, 19% share of JD Sports, around 9% share in Scottish football club Rangers and also purchased the ownership of Millets and Mambo. The British citizen and business tycoon is also having 50% stake in the project Ashleigh Property Holdings Ltd where he has Douglas Leigh as his co-partner.
Michael Ashley owns an aviation company Mash Aviation Limited that offers helicopter services to Michael as well as to the top board members of his sports club. Ashley keeps communication between his home and Derbyshire, using the AGUSTAWESTLAND AW109 helicopter. According to major sources, he has directorship in more than 200 companies while a collection of huge properties are in his name.
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