Faced with a well supported call from activists for a special shareholders’ meeting to oust the chairman and the chief executive, Vernon Sankey and Serge Crasnianski, respective bosses at photo booth operator Photo-Me International, say they really will vacate the boardroom.
Mr Sankey will not seek re-election – as either chairman or a director – at Photo-Me’s annual meeting on October 17, while Mr Crasnianski will retire as CEO as soon as “a successor is in place” and the company concludes the planned sale of its vending division.
The company said in a statement on Friday that by calling an extraordinary general meeting, activists Principle Capital and Cycladic, which together hold 18.2 per cent of Photo-Me, risked jeopardising the vending sale.
An EGM would also be “extremely disruptive and harmful to the operational management” of Photo-Me, the statement said.
But will this quell the shareholde revolt? Unlikely. As Lombard noted earlier on Friday, the patience of Principle and Cycladic has already snapped.