"It is arguable that the past financial statements were falsely represented, as a high proportion of the profits were derived by "an exploitative and unsustainable franchise model" which was unknown to the market."
There is no law against running an unsustainable businesse.
Why, a great many publicly-listed businesses are not sustainable.
(I am even a shareholder in a few of them!)
And the lack of sustainability of the RFG business model was evident in the fact that, if one stripped out the earnings impact from acquisitions over time, it was evident that the core business was going backwards.
And one didn't need to be a qualified forensic accountant to come to that conclusion; the financial maths was quite rudimentary.
As for exploiting franchisees, well there was plenty of evidence of that in the public domain; all you needed to do was to ask the person serving you coffee at your local Michelle's Patisserie how they got on with their major commercial partner. I did in under the pretence that I was looking at buying a franchise of my own; the body language and verbal response I got told me all I needed to know. In spades.
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