The Lark Distilling Co Ltd (ASX: LRK) share price is climbing back from a 21% nosedive yesterday after the company announced the shock departure of its CEO.
At the time of writing, the Lark share price has rebounded 6.94% to $3.85.
Need to be brought up to speed? Here's what is happening…
Image source: Getty Images
Why has the Lark CEO quit?
In a rather sudden announcement, Lark CEO Geoff Bainbridge has handed in his resignation in order to attend to a "personal matter" made known to the Board the day before.
It turns out that the personal matter involves a case of extortion. The Australian newspaper reported yesterday that it had obtained a video in which Bainbridge appears to be engaging in drug use.
Lawyers representing Bainbridge were quoted by the paper saying he is "the subject of a continuing, sophisticated and recently intensified extortion attempt by persons overseas using manipulated unverified images".
Further, the lawyers said: "The attempted extortion of Mr Banbridge commenced years before he had any involvement in Lark Distillery…"
In the meantime, non-executive director Laura McBain has taken the reins as interim managing director.
And seeing as Lark had been hunting for a CEO successor since December as part of its long term planning, the process has been kicked into overdrive.
Lark share price snapshot
The Lark share price opened yesterday at $4.10 and dropped as low as $3.48 throughout the day. By market close, Lark shares were sitting at $3.60 each — a decrease of just under 21%.
Today, Lark began trading at $3.99 but dropped back to $3.84 around lunchtime trade.
Over the last 12 months, the Lark share price has increased by 127%. In March last year, the shares were trading at a 52-week low of $1.63.
The shares hit a 52-week high of $5.61 in October, not long after the distiller completed the first stage of a capital raising, collecting $45.5 million from newly issued shares.
The company has a market capitalisation of $271 million.
