Fashion fail? Asos loses long-time CEO and warns on profits as shares fall again

Many of the online retailer’s battered investors felt they’d had too many surprises and ran, writes James Moore

The retailer says buying habits of customers has changed during the pandemic (Asos)

Fast fashion is looking for a new face of the industry after CEO Nick Beighton’s sudden departure from Asos, which hurriedly brought forward its results to coincide with the announcement.

The latter were always going to give investors a fright. The king of online clobber clobbered them with its warning of slower growth and lower profits than they had expected over the next year.

The shares had already endured a rocky summer. All that combined with a boardroom shake-up - chairman Adam Crozier’s departure’s for BT was announced in August - and it’s no wonder that some of them took it as a signal to run away fast.