Michael James Wallace Ashley, who founded the company now called Frasers Group in 1982 and owns 64 percent of its shares, is planning to hand over the position of CEO to Michael Murray on May 1, 2022, after the end of the company’s current financial year. A statement from the group said its board is discussing the transition and the related reward and remuneration package.
Murray, who is engaged to Ashley’s daughter Anna, was appointed “head of elevation” in January 2019. In that position, he has been upgrading the layout, image and customer experience at some of the group’s stores including the Sports Direct flagship on London’s Oxford Street, which has received positive feedback from customers and brand partners, according to the group. After graduating in real estate from the University of Reading in 2011, he set up his own management consultancy, M.P.M. Prop Co, in London at the end of 2015.
During the past financial year, Frasers entered a service agreement with M.P.M. Elevation, a company controlled by Murray, for an annual fee of around £100,000 (€117,480-$139,070). “The board consider it appropriate that Michael leads us forward on this increasingly successful elevation journey,” said Frasers in a statement coinciding with the release of its results for the financial year ended on April 25. Ashley had said he wanted the group to become the “Selfridges of Sport.” Ashley, who will be 57 years old on Sept. 9, will remain an executive director. He became executive deputy chairman of the group, formerly called Sports Direct International, when it went public in 2007, and he then took the CEO’s role from the departing David Forsey in 2016.
