In this article from the Financial Times there’s a report about Mike Ashley, the boss of Sports Direct, which gives an insight into the disgusting corruption, luxury, and waste that characterizes the most degenerate individuals in the ruling class. This appalling man pays his workers a pittance, treats them terribly at work, and in one case even put someone in the position that she had to give birth in the toilets at work for fear of losing her job if she took time off. All of this happens so that he can make himself a multi-millionaire through corruption and bribery, and so that he can swan around in casinos and go on all-night binges on expensive wines in Mayfair restaurants.
This is the face of the rotting system we have to clear away. Mike Ashley is one of the best arguments we’ve got for the necessity of revolution.
Extracts from the article are below:
A week before Sports Direct’s independent directors approved a deal to give Mike Ashley, its founder, £64m of shares, Ashley treated them to £3,000 bottles of wine and a lucrative night at a casino.
The February 2014 meeting is said to have exhausted a Mayfair restaurant’s supply of its most expensive Richebourg wine.
The claims emerged in the High Court during a case over a dodgy deal Ashley is alleged to have done with an investment banker. The banker painted a lurid picture of Mr Ashley as “a serious businessman who sometimes does business in unorthodox ways and in unusual venues”.
Ashley “was like no other client that anyone at Merrill Lynch had ever come across”.
When he wanted to express boredom, Mr Ashley would “lie underneath meeting room tables to ‘have a nap’”
Sometimes he was more direct. When he took a disliking to Rupert Hume-Kendall, he described the bank’s chairman of equity capital markets, as “a dinosaur” among other less principled names.
He presided over management meetings that were “effectively a ‘pub lock-in’ with alcohol continuing to be served well beyond closing hours and fish & chips or kebabs being provided throughout the evening”.
The banker recounted one occasion on which Mr Ashley was said to have held a drinking competition with a Polish investment banker, which involved consuming pints of lager and vodka “chasers”. The banker “apologised profusely and had to excuse himself” after approximately 12 rounds. “Mr Ashley then vomited into the fireplace,” the banker said, “to huge applause from his management team”.
