Frasers Group stops FRC from publishing key findings of review - report

Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has reportedly refused to allow the Financial Reporting Council to publish the key findings of a review into the retail group’s latest annual report.

According to The Times, Frasers has withheld consent for the regulator to issue a case summary after entering into "substantive inquiries" with the company.

It is the second year running when the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has conducted a review of Frasers’ annual report and when Frasers has refused to allow the issue to be made public, The Times has learnt.

There are only 14 cases, or 4% of the total - three of which concern Frasers or a group company - in which companies have withheld consent since the regulator introduced a more transparent corporate reporting review regime after the independent Sir John Kingman review in 2018.

The regime was introduced when Sir Jon Thompson was chief executive of the regulator. Thompson, 59, a former chief executive of HM Revenue & Customs, is due to join Frasers’ board this year as a non-executive director.

It means Frasers is the only FTSE 100 company to have withheld consent.

The issues raised by the FRC as part of its reviews are unknown but are understood not to relate to audit issues.

A spokeswoman for Frasers told The Times: "The business has already addressed any queries raised by the FRC to their satisfaction.

"It is perfectly common for the FRC to ask questions in relation to accounts … It is not apparent to the business that there is any benefit in publishing outcomes to such questioning where matters have already been resolved and so this has been its approach."