StockMarketWire.com - Energy technology company Zenergy Power plc has ended sale talks following a revolt by major shareholders.

A board shake-up has seen the replacement of non-executive chairman John Poulter and departure of the group's NEDs.

Zenergy announced in February that it had decided its business could best be developed as part of a larger group and said the value of its technology was not reflected in the share price.

It appointed Matrix Corporate Capital and Woodside Capital Partners to seek a purchaser and entered an offer period under the City Code.

However, the company said its board had been told by representatives of certain shareholders that they did not believe selling the company would be in their best interests.

If it had continued to pursue the sale, they threatened to requisition a general meeting to unseat the non-executive directors, including chairman Poulter along with Keith Hodgkinson, Tony O'Reilly, Christopher Nash and David Jeffcoat.

Zenergy said today (April 13) that the NEDs had concluded that 'in light of the level of support for the alternative views, it would not be in the best interests of the company and shareholders generally to enter into a public debate regarding the company's strategy'.

The board had decided to terminate the sale process. It said it had not yet received any expression of interest regarding an offer.

While a number of companies had been contacted, the process was still at an early stage and no party had been given access to due diligence materials.

Following the termination, the company was no longer in an offer period.

Entrepreneur Simon Cleaver has joined the board as executive chairman and David Whelan and Georg Oehm have joined as new non-executive directors.

Cleaver holds 10,000 shares in the company. Whelan is CEO of the Cloverleaf Group, which has a stake of over 10%. Oehm is a director of Mellinckrodt 1 SICAV, which holds about 1.7%.

The NEDs have resigned from the board with immediate effect. Jens Mueller remains as CEO while Karen Chandler will stay as CFO until the AGM on May 24, when she will not seek re-election.

Zenergy said two independent NEDs will be appointed to the board in due course.



At 9:04am: (LON:ZEN) share price was -2.75p at 16.63p



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