Shaft Sinkers CEO and CFO axed after loan payment missed
A miserable six months Shaft Sinkers has culminated with the axing of its chief executive and chief financial officer after the small cap mining shaft specialist defaulted on its bank debt.
Shaft Sinkers Holdings
0.88p
17:09 20/08/15
Support Services
10,465.25
17:10 19/04/24
CEO Alon Davidov and CFO Christopher Hall have left with immediate effect, Shaft Sinkers said in a statement on Monday, with non-executive chairman Marius Heyns taking an executive role and financial controller Hugo Jordaan promoted to fill the gap.
The Johannesburg-based company, which has reported three fatalities at separate projects since August, failed to make a scheduled loan repayment to lender Standard Bank on 31 December, breaching its agreements.
"The company is in discussions with Standard Bank and there can be no certainty that an agreement will be reached," it added.
The company has been trying to raise £9.2m in convertible loan notes since August, partly to pay back a £5m loan to Hillside International, and partly to provide working capital that it hoped would allow it time to secure a longer-term funding package.
Interim results in August showed the company had net debt of £3.6m, which it then added to with a £3.5m loan from Hillside, which was later increased.
At the time Davidov said the business had been severely hit by a number of factors during a challenging first half of the year, including legal fees incurred in relation to contract arbitration with Siwss client EuroChem, a five-month strike impacting contracts with Lonmin and Impala 16, as well as underperformance on certain South African contracts that hurt both its revenues and cash positions.
Shares in the company were down 55% at 2.44p at 10:30 on Monday, and have slowly sunk from a 12-month peak last January of 19.25p and an initial price on listing in late 2010 of roughly 150p.