One of the founders of IFS Construction Services, operations director Doug Weir, has lost his board seat in the midst of a battle for control of the loss-making scaffolding company.
Mr Weir helped establish IFS in 2008, ahead of its ASX-listing in 2009, and survived a boardroom shake-out in 2010 that resulted in major shareholder Billy Ong becoming chairman.
Former managing director Scott Williams, who was one of three directors to resign in 2010, is pushing for a fresh boardroom shake-up.
Mr Williams has requisitioned a shareholder meeting, seeking the removal of five current directors, including Mr Ong.
The only director he didn’t want removed was Mr Weir, who was up for re-election at the company’s annual general meeting yesterday.
IFS shareholders voted against his re-election, with 9.5 million in favour and 48.1 million against.
The company subsequently announced today that non-executive director Michael Fisk had resigned due to medical reasons.
Mr Fisk was one of three new directors who joined the board in 2010; he runs Mr Ong’s Millennium Scaffold Systems business in the United States, while another new director at that time was Mr Ong’s wife, Anita.
Mr Williams wants to replace the current board with three new directors: former ipernica managing director Graham Griffiths, former North West Iron Ore Alliance director Justin Walawski, and accountant Greg LeGuier.
The company’s latest accounts for the year to December 2011 showed improvements in revenue (to $22.8 million) and normalized EBITDA (to $833,000) but a blow-out to a $3.0 million net loss after-tax, after writing off goodwill on its Hire Access subsidiary.
Hire Access has recently been slow in paying its bills, triggering industrial action yesterday on three building sites, including Perth Arena.
