Stobart picks turnaround veteran Shearer as new chair

A corporate turnaround veteran will next week be unveiled as the new chairman of Stobart Group, the FTSE-250 conglomerate, as it seeks to draw a line under more than a year of boardroom warfare.

Sky News has learnt that David Shearer, the chairman of equipment rental group Speedy Hire, has been identified as Iain Ferguson's successor by Stobart's directors.

Mr Shearer's appointment is likely to be announced alongside the industrial conglomerate's annual results.

Stobart owns Southend Airport and recently took a stake in the regional airline Flybe as part of a consortium involving Virgin Atlantic.

It also handles civil engineering for rail projects and owns a domestic airline called Stobart Air.‎

City sources said this weekend that Mr Shearer's reputation as 'a Mr Fix-It' had been crucial to his selection.

In addition to his Speedy Hire role, he chairs a listed investment trust and the Scottish Edge Fund.

A former partner of Deloitte, Mr Shearer has chaired a string of companies, including Mouchel Group and Crest Nicholson, the housebuilder.

At the top of Mr Shearer's agenda will be the unification of Stobart's leading shareholders following a period in which the company and its current and former directors were dragged through an embarrassing courtroom battle.

Woodford Investment Management, the fund manager headed by prominent investor Neil Woodford, and his former employer, Invesco Asset Management, both hold big stakes in Stobart and took opposing sides in an effort to oust Mr Ferguson last year.

The row erupted over the treatment of former chief executive Andrew Tinkler, who was sacked as a director last year and then mounted a legal case to be reinstated.

A bitter legal fight then ensued which found that Mr Tinkler had breached his director's duties but also resulted in Stobart withdrawing its allegation that he had made improper expenses claims.

Some of the company's directors were criticised by the former chief for using company funds to gerrymander the vote at last year's AGM, which Mr Ferguson narrowly survived.

Mr Tinkler continues to hold a 5% stake in Stobart, which also has interests in biomass energy but is now not directly related to the haulier Eddie Stobart.

The appointment of Mr Shearer will come nearly a year after M&G Investments, another substantial shareholder and long-standing supporter of Mr Tinkler, proposed the appointment of Allan Leighton, one of Britain's best-known businessmen, as Stobart's new chairman.

That idea fell flat after being rejected by board members including Warwick Brady, the former easyJet and Ryanair executive who runs Stobart.

A number of senior executives had written anonymously to the board to support Mr Tinkler, underlining the partisan nature of parts of the company's workforce.

The enmity between the two sides was revived earlier this year when Mr Tinkler bought a stake in Flybe and tried to prevent its sale to the Stobart-Virgin Atlantic consortium.

Stobart has continued to endure a difficult time since last year's AGM, announcing in March that it was slashing its dividend in order to invest in expanding Southend Airport.

Its shares are down nearly 40% over the last year, giving the company a market value of just over £520m.

A spokesman for Stobart declined to comment on Saturday.