Wonder if this is where the money from the Barclays loan has gone? https://news.sky.com/story/ashley-rests-easily-with-purchase-of-sofa-com-11624424
100% this, and I wish to God that NUFC fans would stop embarrassing themselves thinking that's what he's doing. He's not going to the NUFC cashpoint and drawing out £70m to buy companies over the counter. It's all done with 'virtual' money, mostly, down payments and such related to MASH Holdings Plc. There is a possibility that he is paying off his own loan (NUFC -> MASH), then divesting this money to pay for other businesses (MASH -> HMV), but sadly there's not a lot 'wrong' with that. TBH, I want him to keep repaying himself ahead of transfers. The sooner NUFC owes him nothing the better, in my view.
I posted a while back saying that Ashley was going to get stung big time with this Debenhams ****e, looks like my prediction was right. £150 million has got to hurt, but l guess what will piss the Fat Man off more than the money, is the fact that he didn’t get his own way for once.
To be fair this is like choosing between picking up a sloppy ****e with your bare hands or picking up an extra sloppy ****e with your bare hands. You can decide which one is Ashley, and which one is the lenders. The 150m will sting but Ashley will have known the banks and hedge funds would be working underhand to **** him. His problem is the strings he attached. They were never gonna let the fox into the chicken coop.