The founder of listed law firm owner RBG Holdings has made a formal move to overhaul the leadership of the group.
It was announced yesterday by the board of RBG Holdings that Ian Rosenblatt had issued a requisition notice on 20 December.
The notice requests the convening of a general meeting to consider resolutions to remove the current chief executive Jon Divers and two current non-executive directors, and to appoint a new trio in their place.
The announcement added: ‘The board will convene the requisite meeting in accordance with the statutory timelines. The Board does not believe these resolutions are in the best interests of all shareholders and will make a further announcement in due course. Shareholders are advised to take no action at this time.’
Speculation had grown last month that Rosenblatt, the largest shareholder of the company, was considering demanding the replacement of three senior executives in an attempt to revive its fortunes. The prospective replacements were understood to be Jonathan Fox, a former managing partner of accountants Saffery Champness, who would be installed as chairman; Adil Taha, a former commercial director of new model firm Mezzle Law and head of global operations at Gunnercooke, who would take over as RBG’s chief executive; and Jonathan Watmough, former Reynolds Porter Chamberlain managing partner, who would join as a non-executive director.
RBG Holdings, which owns the law firm firms Rosenblatt and Memery Crystal, listed in 2018 but has gone through two years of boardroom turmoil, including the departure of chief executive Nicola Foulston.
In the year to 31 December 2023 RBG Holdings recorded a pre-tax loss of £700,000, compared with a profit of £7.6m in 2022.
Shares in the company were trading at 10.25p a year ago but slipped to less than 2p by November. After a small recovery in recent weeks, the share price dropped 1.7% to 2.85p following this week’s announcement.
