The Issa brothers, who snapped up Asda from Walmart in a £6.8bn deal earlier this month, have seen the credit rating on its petrol forecourt empire EG Group slashed to B3 from B2 by Moody’s, as first reported by The Times.

Moody’s said the downgrade was prompted by “limited progress in terms of financial reporting and governance, with regards to internal controls and board composition, relative to its substantially increased scale and complexity following large-scale M&A activity in the last two years”.