Retail billionaire Gerry "Trump" Harvey has a message for the foreign short seller he blames for the "hearsay and rumours" that have recently plagued the company: "Piss off!"

The Harvey Norman executive chairman gave a voluble – rather than emphatic – rebuttal of allegations that the retailer's financial relationship with its franchisees is not entirely transparent, and it is hiding problem loans as so-called "tactical support".

"It has been started by a short seller ... he's been trying to disrupt our company," he told a packed shareholder meeting at the Sydney Tattersalls club on Monday.

It was all kicked off by the retailer's latest annual report, which contained the surprise that it has loans totalling $943 million to its franchisees and had written off $566 million of those loans – what it calls "tactical support" – since 2011.