Trafalgar Property Group PLC (AIM:TRAF) is getting a fresh start, with its shares surging 144% to 0.06p after the company announced a £1.93 million cash injection from ROI Capital Holdings International Corp, a Latin American-focused investment vehicle.
ROI paired the investment with a clean sweep of its board and a disposal of its existing property business.
The current property subsidiaries are being sold to an existing director, Chris Johnson, for £1, effectively drawing a line under the old business entirely, and a previous property transaction involving chairman and chief executive Paul Treadaway is also being unwound.
Treadaway is stepping down, along with the rest of the current board, with incoming chief executive Martin Hull taking the helm alongside a new non-executive team that includes Hugo Quevedo as chairman and two further directors, Javier Alvarez and Juan Manuel Santucci.
Hull has been fairly direct about the plan, describing the goal as moving quickly to identify and execute a reverse takeover, the mechanism by which a private company typically uses an existing listed shell to gain a stock market quotation without going through a full initial public offering.
Shareholders need to approve the whole package at a general meeting, and the Takeover Panel has agreed to waive the mandatory offer obligation that would otherwise be triggered by ROI's sizeable incoming stake.
Treadaway said he was proud of what the team had built and was confident the company was in good hands.