A domineering leader with no regard for corporate governance, a business recording a terrible performance, confusion about plans for the chairmanship… no, not M&S, but Sports Direct.

Sports Direct was the most controversial retail story of 2007, but this year the corporate governance travails of Sir Stuart Rose have dominated the headlines, while Mike Ashley has been seen more on the sports than the business pages.

Events haven’t helped Sports Direct during its first year as a public company – the failure of the home nations to quality for Euro 2008 was a particularly nasty blow – but Ashley hasn’t helped himself. Last year, the boardroom door seemed to barely stop revolving as directors struggled to get used to his unconventional approach, and Sports Direct’s levels of disclosure made genuine analysis of its performance difficult.

But there are signs that the lessons of its first year on the stock market have been learnt. Yesterday’s poor full-year results, which showed a halving in underlying pre-tax profits, had at least been flagged up to the City, although this didn’t stop the share price falling 11 per cent yesterday and a further 5 per cent today.

There was also a positive sign in the retailer finally agreeing to release like-for-like figures. OK, it’s only going to be once a year, but at least it’s a start.

But these are only small steps. Sports Direct remains a high-risk investment, and its failure to find a permanent chairman over a period of more than six months only serves to show that it still has a long way to go on corporate governance. Surely with the share price now languishing at just 60p, there must be a temptation for Ashley to consider buying it back.

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