Shares in have tumbled to their lowest level since 2011 after its auditors quit, leaving the retailer with less than a month to find a replacement. The share price slumped more than 11% to 214p on the news, valuing the company at just over £1bn. Wednesday’s slump slashed the value of Mike Ashley’s 62% stake in the business by almost £90m. Grant Thornton, which has audited Sports Direct since it floated on the Stock Exchange in 2007, said it would stop working with Ashley’s business following its annual general meeting on 11 September. The announcement comes a day after Sports Direct published its annual report in which Ashley, the chief executive, proposed that Grant Thornton be reappointed by shareholders at the meeting. The resignation puts Sports Direct in a difficult position as Ashley said in the report that the scale and complexity of the company means that only one of the “big four” accounting firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and EY – would be able to cope with its auditing requirements. However, he admitted that “early discussions” with each of them over taking on the audit responsibility for Sports Direct had fallen flat.
The government’s energy emergency committee will give a verdict on National Grid (NG.) handling of last Friday’s nationwide blackout within weeks. The business secretary, Andrea Leadsom, has tasked the government’s Energy Emergencies Executives Committee with completing a review of the system operator’s role in Britain’s first major blackout in a decade within 12 weeks. The investigation is expected to establish what happened to cause the UK blackout and whether correct procedures were followed. It will also consider whether future power cuts could be prevented and how to minimise the impact of a blackout on people and essential services when they do occur. “National Grid has already confirmed that the incident was not linked to the variability of wind power, a clean, renewable energy source that the government is investing in as we work towards becoming a net zero emissions economy by 2050,” Leadsom said. “Friday’s incident does, however, demonstrate the need to have a diverse energy mix.”
FirstGroup (FGP) has won the franchise to run west coast intercity trains, despite opposition from its own shareholders, fears over the financial viability of its other rail operations and legal action by rival bidders. The government announced that First, the majority partner in a joint venture with the Italian state operator Trenitalia, will take over intercity services on the London-Glasgow line from December. The line, which links the capital with cities including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, has been run since privatisation by Virgin Rail. The First-Trenitalia bid was chosen over a Chinese consortium led by the Hong Kong operator MTR, First’s partner on South Western. Trenitalia has been named “shadow operator” for HS2, with responsibility for introducing new services but with a caveat that it may not go ahead, depending on the outcome of reviews into the construction of the high-speed network and the shape of the entire rail industry. First-Trenitalia will pay £1.6bn in premiums to run the West Coast services – Britain’s most lucrative line – from this December until 2026, with a second phase of payments to depend on HS2. The contract could run until 2034 with an extension.
