DAVE WHELAN’s helicopter touched down at 1.06pm. His pilot had been given instructions to land close to the three ponds in the grounds of David Hughes’s Cheshire mansion.
Whelan, the entrepreneur who founded JJB Sports, and his late son-in-law Duncan Sharpe, prepared to disembark.
Waiting to greet them were two bitter high-street rivals — Hughes, chairman of Allsport, and Mike Ashley, founder of Sports Soccer.
During the next 50 minutes — according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) — the four retailers arranged a ceasefire to end a damaging three-month price war and agreed to fix the price of Manchester United and England football shirts.
But it was a meeting that would land them in trouble, with an OFT investigation and record multi-million pound fines for all those involved.
The actual events of the meeting on June 8 remain the subject of much dispute, but the 337-page ruling from the Competition Appeal Tribunal, published this month after an appeal by JJB and Allsports, provides an insight into this extraordinary event.
As Whelan and Sharpe disembarked from the helicopter, Hughes stepped forward to introduce Ashley. The two rivals, it is said, refused to shake hands.
“(Whelan) made no secret of the fact he despised Ashley,” said Hughes in his evidence.
Two months later Ashley blew the whistle. He reported the meeting to the OFT, claiming that he had no choice but to attend under intense pressure from Umbro, one of his biggest suppliers.
The greetings over, the four entrepreneurs — who together are worth nearly £750m — walked to the house, a five-minute stroll through the impressive grounds.
Coffee was made in the kitchen and after a quick tour of the house to “break the ice” the four men moved to the study.
Whelan and Ashley sat on opposite settees. Hughes sat behind his desk and produced a sample of the new Manchester United shirt and started by outlining the quality of it.
But Whelan butted in. Turning on Ashley, he is reported to have said: “The price for the MU shirt will be £39.99, son.”
Later he added: “There is a club in the north, son, and your’re not part of it.”
Nevertheless, according to Ashley and Hughes, within 20 minutes an agreement had been reached: £39.99 was the price of the Manchester United shirt.
Whelan disputed this record of events. Ashley, he claimed, was waiting in the study and he left within minutes of pricing being raised — a version of events that is disputed by the tribunal.
Whelan said he had thought Hughes wanted to discuss the sale of Allsports. “We have never fixed prices with anyone,” he said.
Whoever is right, the next morning, according to the OFT, Hughes telephoned Tom Knight, the boss of Blacks, another retailer, and informed him that Sports Soccer would be selling the Manchester United shirt for £39.99.
Later that day he wrote a memo to his senior directors. It said: “I have already told you that JJB are going at £39.99 on 1st August in adult sizes and Sports Soccer will also do that.”
Hughes later claimed that he had lied — in an attempt to get the directors to hold their price. “I thought I was doing an Alistair (sic) Campbell of a PR job,” he told the OFT.
The memo was not the only evidence unearthed by the OFT during its investigation.
On July 13 Martin Prothero, an Umbro director, wrote to Steve Richards at Manchester United: “As you know, Umbro have worked very hard in agreeing a consensus to the price of the new Manchester United jersey. At one stage we even managed to get Messrs Hughes, Ashley and Whelan in the same room to agree the issue.”
Prothero later claimed he had “exaggerated”.
The details of the meeting, memos and letters will damage the reputations of those involved. But the tribunal was also damning about much of the evidence presented.
Whelan is described by the tribunal as inconsistent. “Mr Whelan’s account of that meeting
... led us to conclude that (his) recollection of what transpired at that meeting is not wholly reliable,” it said.
“On a number of occasions when his previous statements were put to him, he either maintained that his solicitors had made a mistake, or declared that, ‘I must stick to my statement’, even when it was apparent that the statement in question might well need to be qualified,” it said.
“He has created JJB, largely single-handedly through his personal hard work and leadership. As a result, as he agreed in evidence, JJB largely ‘is’ Mr Whelan, and ‘if you hurt JJB you hurt me’. Mr Whelan agreed he could be ruthless in business and we have no doubt that he is the ‘boss’ of JJB in every sense,” added the tribunal.
David Greenwood, finance director of JJB Sports, is quick to jump to Whelan’s defence: “He has been consistent throughout. Other witnesses have not been so consistent.”
Whelan himself insists that he “told the truth”.
Others are also criticised in the report. Hughes — who jointly owns Allsports with 3i, the FTSE 100 venture-capital firm — is slammed for tampering with evidence, attempting to cover over entries in his diary.
“The entries for 5, 6, 7 and 8 June 2000 were scored out in Mr Hughes’s diary in Biro, further entries were scored out in black felt-tip marker pen and cannot be read by the naked eye,” said the tribunal report.
“As we understand it, this scoring out was done just before the diary was handed over. It is admitted that Mr Hughes intended to conceal these entries.”
The report added: “Had the OFT not sent the diary for forensic examination, the effect of Mr Hughes applying black marker to these diaries would have been to conceal from the tribunal potentially relevant evidence.
“We find it difficult to believe that Mr Hughes, an obviously intelligent man, did not realise this.”
The tribunal also criticised Hughes for hosting a dinner for directors of Umbro, Nike, Adidas and Manchester United in May 2000 at which he “berated” the brands for allowing retailers to discount their products, telling the suppliers they should “exercise control over the retail price of ‘statement products’”.
A spokesman for Allsports said the retailer was considering an appeal. “If only life was as black and white as the tribunal portrays it,” he said.
“As for the diary, a full explanation was giving to the tribunal after the hearing, but they paid little regard to it,” he added.
Umbro, which is still waiting for the outcome of its separate appeal, refused to comment.
As for the OFT, it is delighted the tribunal upheld the vast majority of its findings.
“This case sends a clear message about price-fixing agreements and shows how competition law works for consumers,” said the OFT, arguing that the price of an England shirt had fallen from £39.99 during Euro 2000 to as little as £25 by the time of Euro 2004.