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UK retail billionaire Mike Ashley has increased his spending on private jet and helicopter travel since taking a step back from running his business empire.
His annual spending on the Frasers Group’s jet and helicopter rose to £2.6mn in the year to April 30 2023, up from £1.5mn the previous year, according to filings for Mash Holdings, the holding company for Ashley’s various business interests.
Ashley started as the owner of a single sports shop in Maidenhead in 1982 and went on to build Frasers, a FTSE 100 business that owns sportswear chain Sports Direct as well as other brands including Gieves & Hawkes, Jack Wills and Evans Cycles, into a group valued at £3.7bn.
Frasers also has stakes in other listed retailers such as Asos, Boohoo and Currys. Ashley owns some 70 per cent of Frasers shares.
Frasers owns an AgustaWestland AW109 helicopter and it previously spent nearly £40mn on a Dassault Falcon 7X. The aircraft have recently travelled to Miami’s Opa locka executive airport, Dubai’s Al Maktoum international airport and the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as well as London, Redhill and Coventry in the UK, the Times first reported.
In 2022, Ashley handed the day-to-day running of the business to his son-in-law, Michael Murray, who has been seeking to modernise the group and its brands. Ashley no longer sits on the board but has remained available to advise the group “when called upon”.
He previously defended flying to work by helicopter in a BBC interview, saying he was not paid a salary “but I do like to go by plane, and I do like to go by private plane because it saves a lot of time and it’s very efficient”.
Earlier this year he said he would become an unpaid adviser to Hornby, the seller of Corgi cars, miniature trains and Scalextric racetracks, after Frasers built a stake in the business.
The Mash filings come after Frasers dropped a €50mn lawsuit against Morgan Stanley that had accused the Wall Street bank of “snobbery”.
Frasers withdrew the lawsuit after a trial that concluded in March. No money had been exchanged between the parties, according to Morgan Stanley.
Frasers Group declined to comment.
