Stobart chairman Iain Ferguson lines up plan to step down from board

Stobart chairman Iain Ferguson is preparing a succession plan that will see him resign from the board within months, a report this evening revealed.

The Stobart chair has discussed a proposal to get a new chairman in place before the company’s annual meeting next year.

Sky News this evening reported that a formal timetable had not yet been agreed, but quoted sources who said the directors “acknowledged the need to look at the composition of the board”.

A spokesperson for Stobart declined to comment on the report.

It comes days after Stobart’s annual general meeting in Guernsey, where a vote to re-elect Ferguson as chairman was passed by a narrow majority of 51.2 per cent in favour.

Read more: The results are in: Boardroom row at Stobart ends, but not without a fight

The results of the votes came in late last night, as the votes were still being counted on Friday and it seems that Stobart’s board of directors had some fractious decisions to make.

A last-minute vote from the floor of the meeting to install Andrew Tinkler as a director was passed by 51.4 per cent, after a legal case to put himself on the ballot ahead of the meeting was rejected by a Guernsey court.

However the move was later reversed by a dismissal from the other directors, with Ferguson saying that “it would not be in best interests of the company for [Tinkler] to act as a director”.

Read more: Court rules against Ex-Stobart Group boss ahead of today’s crunch vote

A spokesperson for Tinkler said that it was “pretty extraordinary” that the results of the vote were put out late on a Saturday night, adding that an investigation is being carried out into the identities of voters on either side of the resolution.