The owner of Sports Direct has battled with investors since his company’s stock market debut

The farce over Sports Direct’s annual results is the latest fraught episode in Mike Ashley’s relationship with the City.

Shares in the company sank on the group’s stock market debut in 2007 and continued their downward trajectory for two years as profits disappointed and Ashley, the founder and controlling shareholder, kept his distance from investors and the media. A pick up in trading then won over fund managers, helping to nearly triple Sports Direct’s share price, taking the company’s value to a peak of more than £5bn by mid 2014.

This is when Ashley’s shareholder bust ups began, with an investor rebellion which forced the company to ditch a bonus scheme that could have handed him free shares worth £72m.

The company won approval for a rejigged bonus plan a few months later. But two weeks on, after the Institute of Directors said the 60% vote in favour by independent shareholders was not a “ringing endorsement”, Ashley suddenly announced he would not participate in the scheme.

The bonus saga may have been a score-draw but it left some investors questioning Sports Direct’s leadership. The IoD, a business lobby group, also warned that there was no “check on Mike Ashley’s power” at the company.

The brewing rebellion did not get into gear until Sports Direct’s 2016 annual shareholder meeting when 57% of independent shareholders failed to support then chairman Keith Hellawell, amid rising criticism of the group’s treatment of workers in the light of a Guardian undercover investigation.

The vote against Hellawell also came shortly after it emerged that Sports Direct had been paying an obscure company owned by Mike Ashley’s brother to deliver online orders outside the UK.

Thumbing his nose at the City, Ashley ignored the no-confidence vote, convening a second ballot a few months later, where he was able to use his controlling stake to force through the reinstatement of Hellawall.

Ashley said Hellawell’s years of experience would help implement a turnaround plan and tackle unrest over worker treatment with a package that included offering shop workers guaranteed hours contracts instead of zero hours arrangements – and an independent review of its working practices.

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A year later, Sports Direct had backed away from most of those promises, but Hellawell held on until 2018. He left after independent investors rebelled again at a chaotic shareholder meeting.

Ashley later launched a tirade against shareholders who he said had “stabbed Sports Direct and myself in the back”. At the same meeting, nearly 37% of independent shareholders had voted to block the reappointment of the Sports Direct founder as a director.

The latest debacle only adds to speculation that Ashley, who owns 62% of Sports Direct, will turn his back on the City entirely and take the company private again.