The Issa brothers ought to have got their ducks in a row before they moved to buy Asda

The city’s nostrils are twitching – why did Deloitte quit the Issa brothers just as they were acquiring the supermarket? Something doesn’t smell right, writes Chris Blackhurst

Asda was this month bought for £6.8bn (AFP/Getty)

Hands up if you’d heard of Zuber and Mohsin Issa until very recently.

Come on now, tell the truth. I’ll freely admit the Blackburn-based brothers had not crossed my radar, even though I read the business media pretty avidly, I like to think I know what is going on, who is up and who is down, and when it comes to the country’s wealthiest folk and how they made their fortunes, my interest verges on the unhealthy.

Somehow the pair, billionaires apparently, had passed me by. I’ve also got a thing about the north, because it’s where I’m from originally and there aren’t that many entrepreneurs in that self-made, super-rich category in that part of the world. Still the Issas did not register. The fact they’d built a network of 6,000 petrol forecourts here and internationally had not grabbed my attention.