The finance director of oil services group Cape paid for its fourth profits warning in 12 months with his job today.
Richard Bingham, who was paid £550,000 last year, is leaving with immediate effect and an expected contractual one-year’s pay-off.
Cape shares, which stood at 465p ahead of the November 2011 profit warning, crashed by a third today, falling 87p to a six-year low of 175p.
The company, which is chaired by former Tory energy minister Tim Eggar, said that full-year profits would be “significantly below expectations”.
The major reason is that its onshore oil operation in Australia was hit by a downturn in trading and a write down of the value of some parts of the business after a review of its balance sheet there. This review will now be extended across the whole group.
But it has also been affected by a bad debt write down of £1.5 million with a Saudi client and is still suffering delays on its Arzew liquified natural gas project in Algeria which cost chief executive Martin May his job in March.
Cape said that completion of the project by the deadline of the end of the first quarter of next year still depended on the client releasing more workers.
It has not increased the £14 million provision it made on Arzew during the first half but said it was “initiating discussions with its client in order to secure compensation for any additional costs incurred due to delays caused by inadequate work-package releases”.
