Shareholders nominate billionaire Philip Day as Stobart Group chair

Some of Stobart Group’s biggest shareholders have requisitioned to nominate billionaire entrepreneur Philip Day as its chairman, in the midst of a heated boardroom row between the infrastructure company’s management and former chief executive.

Several shareholders, including fund manager Neil Woodford’s Woodford Investment Management, have put forward the owner of Peacocks and Edinburgh Woollen Mill to replace the current chairman Iain Ferguson. The management of the FTSE 250 company has previously said it is backing Mr Ferguson to stay on in the role. 

The move comes as a boardroom battle escalates at the top of the company that owns Southend airport and is the UK’s biggest biomass supplier. Last month, Stobart’s board published a statement highly critical of its executive director and former chief executive Andrew Tinkler, who is spearheading an attempt to oust Mr Ferguson.

According to a statement from Stobart on Tuesday, Mr Tinkler, who owns a 7.7 per cent stake in the company, has the support of Woodford Investment Management and Allan Jenkinson, who own 20 per cent and 6 per cent respectively. 

Mr Jenkinson is a former Stobart director who sold the biomass business to the company when Mr Tinkler was at the helm. 

Stobart said:

The Company announces that it has received a requisition from shareholders holding in excess of 33 per cent of the Company's voting capital to nominate Philip Day to be elected as a Director of the Company either at its forthcoming Annual General Meeting or at a subsequently convened general meeting and to invite the Board to nominate him as Chairman.

The choice of Mr Day, a high street retail tycoon who rescued Peacocks in 2012 and also owns Edinburgh Woollen Mill, is an unconventional one for the company that split from transport and logistics group Eddie Stobart in 2014. The entrepreneur, who owns a castle in Cumbria but is now based in Dubai, is not believed to have served on the board of a public company before.

Mr Day declined to comment. It is understood that he was asked by Mr Woodford to consider being nominated for the role, rather than by Cumbria-based Mr Tinkler. 

Stobart Group said that it would convene a general meeting to put Mr Day’s election to a shareholder vote and that its nomination committee will make a recommendation on Mr Day’s candidature “in due course”.