GOALS Soccer Centres, the East Kilbride-based five-a-side football pitch firm, has defended its investigation into an accounting blunder after shareholder Mike Ashley signalled plans to attempt a boardroom coup over the issue.
The firm said calls by Mr Ashley to appoint separate investigators are inappropriate and said it “re-emphasises” that its investigations into historical accounting errors are “wide-ranging”.
Mike Ashley has threatened directors with an attempt to oust the board after they rejected his call to hire an investigator of his choice.
The tycoon’s company, Sports Direct, said in a statement that it was planning to vote against the reappointment of Goals’ entire board at its annual general meeting next week.
READ MORE: Mike Ashley threatens boardroom coup at Scottish football pitch firm
Mr Ashley had wanted independent advisers at Kroll be appointed to look into accounting mistakes, which are estimated to be worth £12 million.
Goals, however, said that it was continuing talks with HMRC over the errors and had already engaged “forensic accountants” to examine the issue.
Sports Direct, which owns an 18.9 per cent stake in Goals, responded by claiming that the appointed advisers are not independent, being a division of the company’s auditors.
The South Lanarkshire company said it “notes the desire of Sport Direct to appoint Kroll” adding its investigations “cover the actions and decisions of the company over an extended period of time”. It also “notes the voting intention of Sports Direct” and “respects the views of all its shareholders”.
Goals confirmed earlier this week that it has hired advisory firm Deloitte to assess future options, which led to speculation over the potential sale of the listed firm.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here