Ardent under fire

THE major shareholders of the company that owns and operates Dreamworld, Ardent Leisure Grp, have slammed the way the business “has performed, been managed and been governed”.

Portfolio Services Pty Ltd and Kayaal Pty Ltd, which own approximately 9.86% of Ardent Leisure, told fellow shareholders it has “significant concerns” that need to be addressed.

In a letter, the parties said the current Ardent board has “hastily attempted to correct and clear obvious issues that have been present for a considerable time”.

Portfolio Services & Kayaal said “a new focus” was necessary, and sought the removal of current Ardent directors, to be replaced by four independent directors ( TD Wed), being Dr Gary Weiss, Kevin Seymour AM, Carl Bradford Richmond and Andrew Hedges, possessing “extremely impressive backgrounds, qualifications and experience”.

“We strongly believe that their respective commercial experience and successes stand in contradistinction to the mediocre performance of the Company and its board,” Portfolio & Kayaal said.

“Given as of 01 Jul there will be four vacant positions on the board to be filled and in light of the deterioration of Ardent Leisure Group’s financial and operation performance in recent years, we propose to nominate the four candidates named above to fill these vacation positions.”