Hibu’s under-fire chief is set to step down

Yellow Pages publisher Hibu said its chief executive Mike Pocock will step down early next year but maintained he was not bowing to pressure from angry shareholders who have demanded he quit after the debt-laden company’s stock-market collapse in July.

Hibu said it had not yet lined up a replacement for Pocock. Chairman Bob Wigley, a former top Merrill Lynch banker, and the other non-executives are also off, with veteran technology executive Alfred Mockett taking over from him.

Pocock maintained he would be leaving after the “completion of the restructuring”. Hibu has been in negotiations for months with its lenders about a £1.5 billion debt-for-equity swap, but many shareholders are furious as they have been left with nothing.

Barry Dearing, a solicitor for a group of dissident investors called the Hibu Shareholders Group, slammed today’s board changes “which indicate that those behind the ‘restructuring’ consider that it is a done deal”.

HSG has been pushing for an extraordinary general meeting to grill the board about its behaviour.