Mike Ashley could now be considering a return to Tyneside, with a potential purchase of the Metrocentre.
This comes almost five years after he sold Newcastle United to the Saudi Arabia PIF and Reuben family.
Sky News report that their information is that Mike Ashley via Frasers Group, which he is the majority owner of, is among the parties that are considering making an offer to buy the Metrocentre.
Such a purchase would cost around the £500m mark but Sky News reports that this simply reinforces: ‘The retail tycoon’s burgeoning appetite to own some of Britain’s most popular shopping destinations. Once part of Intu, the retail property group which collapsed into administration in 2020 after amassing £4.5bn in debt, the Metrocentre remains the UK’s biggest regional shopping hub outside London.’
The Metrocentre originally opened in October 1986 and is now coming up to a 40th birthday.
Sir John Hall was the person that masterminded the Metrocentre, developing the land and building it, before selling it on to the Church Commissioners.
Sir John Hall then of course 19 years ago (2007) selling his majority stake in Newcastle United to Mike Ashley, which led very quickly to 100% ownership for Ashley.
Sky News adding: ‘In its half-year results, announced last December, Frasers said it had continued to invest in such sites “at attractive yields to satisfy our occupational demand, with new shopping centres and retail park acquisitions including sites at Greenock and Almondvale”. After period end, [we] completed the £217.6m acquisition of Braehead retail park near Glasgow.” If it proceeded with a deal, Metrocentre would be the largest retail property transaction undertaken so far by Frasers.’
Apart from the one at St James’ Park, Mike Ashley closed all of the official Newcastle United club shops to take away competition for his Sports Direct stores on Tyneside.
That included closing the one at the Metrocentre (I think there may even have been two official NUFC shops at the Metrocentre before Mike Ashley closed them).
If Frasers Group do indeed go ahead with a purchase of the Metrocentre, it will then ironically mean that Mike Ashley will become the landlord of the official Newcastle United shop that the current club owners opened as part of their rebuilding of the retails side after Ashley’s dismantling of it.