Former mining services company Viento Group is under new leadership after a board restructure replaced all directors, including John Silverthorne, who in July struck a deal to buy all of the company’s assets for $17 million and form a new private venture which trades as Viento Contracting Services.
In a statement today, the Viento Group shell, which has been in administration since April, said Ray Munro, Mr Silverthorne, John Farrell and Doug Grewar had resigned as directors, effective immediately.
They were replaced by Michael Hui, Georgina Varley and John Knights.
Damian Wright was replaced by Tom Bloomfield as company secretary.
In July, Mr Silverthorne engaged Queensland firm CRC Business Solutions to negotiate a restructuring of Viento Group, which resulted in a deal between himself and one of CRC’s offshore funding partners, CarVal Investors.
Mr Silverthorne and CarVal formed a joint venture, and purchased all of Viento Group’s assets for $17 million. He, Mr Munro and Mr Grewar remain directors of the private company, Viento Contracting Services.
The joint venture also took ownership of Viento Group’s debt, along with two contracts it had with iron ore miners BC Iron and Rio Tinto in the Pilbara.
The ASX-listed Viento Group struck trouble early in the year when it reported its subsidiary HVLV was running a loss-making project after running into problems last year.
Editor's note: The original story failed to make clear that three directors who quit the Viento Group shell, Ray Munro, John Silverthorne and Doug Grewar, remain as directors of the private joint venture company, Viento Contracting Services.
