Share price crashes 65% at pension fund-backed big data firm

West Yorkshire Pension Fund-backed big data company Fusionex International has seen its share price crash through the floor after resignations and a row over plans to delist.

The Jersey-based company’s share price crashed by 64.15% yesterday following the morning announcement, in which non-executive chairman John Croft and brokers Peel Hunt resigned. It lost more than £10m off its value.

The West Yorkshire Pension Fund, a scheme for local authority employees, holds 1.53m shares in the business, (2.80% of the company) making it the fifth largest investor in the business according to the Financial Times.

Jarvis Investment is the biggest shareholder. It owns 2.7m shares – 4.97% of the company – followed by Standard Life, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse.

Fusionex will hold an extraordinary general meeting on June 15 to propose cancelling its listing on AIM due to poor share price performance.

It said in the announcement after close of play on Friday: “The directors believe that, for the 15 months preceding the date of this document, the performance of the company’s share price has been disappointing.

“The directors also believe that the costs of remaining listed on AIM could be better spent within the business. The cost involved with being a compliant company from a regulatory perspective and with maintaining the company’s admission to trading are, in the directors’ opinion, disproportionate to the current benefits to the company.

“After careful consideration of the matters laid out above, the directors have therefore concluded that the commercial disadvantages of maintaining the admission to trading on AIM of the shares at this time in the company’s development outweigh the potential benefits, and that it is therefore no longer in the company’s or its shareholders’ best interests to maintain the admission to trading on AIM of the shares.”

West Yorkshire Pension Fund has come under fire for investing in fossil fuel companies including Shell and BP in recent years, justifying it by saying the companies have begun to recover and still pay dividends.

Fusionex International share price for the year to May 2017. Courtesy of London Stock Exchange