PaperlinX chairman, Harry Boon, will leave the company on 28 September, along with his supporters, non-executive directors Lyndsey Cattermole and Anthony Clarke, in a boardroom coup that sees shareholder lobbyist, Andrew Price, win his battle against the company’s leadership.
The company announced today (19 September), that Boon, Cattermole and Clarke have resigned from the board with their departure on 28 September only weeks before the next annual general meeting, scheduled for 31 October.
The resignation of Boon and his two close boardroom non-executive directors is the final phase in the bitter leadership struggle that shareholder insurrection leader, Price, instigated earlier this year with an extraordinary general meeting that was held at his bidding in March to decide on Boon’s future as chairman.
After Boon secured his position as chair at the EGM, the company offered Price a position on the board, which he knocked back. However, in August, Price eventually took his position as a non-executive director on the board, after the company saw the departure of CEO, Toby Marchant, and sold off several of its international loss making paper businesses, moving towards a smaller but more diversified operational structure to combat its continuing poor bottom line financial results.
The resignations leave only two directors on the board, Andrew Price and Mike McConnell. Sources confirm that replacement directors will be appointed well before the AGM in October.
According to PaperlinX gadfly, Graham Critchley, convenor of the activist website, PaperlinX Sux, Harry Boon jumped before he was about to be pushed from the board. He says a notice for a 2nd extraordinary general meeting (EGM2) was about to be delivered to the company today.
Critchley believes the numbers were stacked against the incumbent and he jumped ship rather than face an undignified bunfight at the AGM and EGM2. Presumably the demand for the EGM2 was coming from Andrew Price, who called the first one in March. Since then Price with a seat on the board is on track to become the executive chairman of the company, if he wants to. Price as not available for comment at time of going to press.
Whether the change of regime will improve the prospects of the hybrid holders getting any money back from their investment is unclear. Undoubtedly the new board will be looking to realise the value of the company along the lines proposed by Andrew Price.
There is plenty of room to improve with PaperlinX share price continuing its drastic drop to trade at slightly over five cents, half what it was in May.