00:00 Now look, I'm not an accountant, Mr. Asa,
00:01 neither are you by the sounds of it,
00:03 but when I looked at the accounts,
00:05 it looked as if Asda was put into a loss-making position,
00:10 was able to take money back from the taxpayer,
00:13 paid out a dividend at the top of the company
00:15 in a low-tax jurisdiction,
00:18 and that seems to me that money's being taken
00:20 out of the business whilst taking money back
00:22 from the taxpayer and then not having as available income
00:25 to reduce the cost of your petrol or your food prices
00:28 or pay your wages properly to your staff.
00:30 Do you agree with that assessment?
00:32 - I'm confirmed there's no dividends been taken out of Asda.
00:36 - Well, at Bellis Acquisition Company level, there was.
00:39 There was 1.7 billion pounds noted as dividend.
00:44 - There's been no dividends taken out to shareholders.
00:48 - Okay, I think you might need to write to me, Mr. Asa,
00:50 with just the detailed answers to those questions.
00:52 Are you happy to do that for me?
00:54 Okay, thank you.
00:55 And I don't know if you heard the testimony
00:57 from the Competition and Markets Authority before,
00:59 but they were essentially not very happy
01:01 with the way that you and your colleagues
01:02 engaged with their inquiry into petrol prices
01:06 and said that if they could have charged you
01:07 more than 60,000 pounds because of your behavior,
01:09 they would have done.
01:10 Do you have any reflections on that?
01:12 - That's unfair, personally,
01:16 'cause we sort of complied
01:18 with all regulatory sort of requests.
01:21 - You have nothing further to add?
01:25 - Yeah, can I just say that I'm personally
01:30 not very happy at all with the responses
01:33 from Mr. Asa, who is the co-owner of Asda.
01:38 You've asked him some fairly simple questions,
01:43 and unfortunately, Mr. Asa says
01:46 he's not in a position to answer.
01:48 He's a co-owner of Asda.
01:50 - Yeah, I do struggle, Mr. Asa,
01:53 with the point that Ian Lavery's making.
01:56 I think you've been struggling to appoint a CEO
01:58 and a chief financial officer as well.
02:00 Why have you not been able to make those people appointed
02:03 so they can come and answer our questions properly?
02:06 - We have appointed a chief financial officer recently.
02:10 - Why are they not here?
02:11 - I was asked to come as CEO.
02:17 - There was a discussion via my clerks
02:19 whether the chief financial officer could come,
02:20 and in the end, they didn't come.
02:22 You don't know anything about that?
02:25 I don't.
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