Ex-Labour minister Drayson booted from company he founded
Former Labour minister Lord Drayson has been booted as chief of the firm he set up as part of a rescue package that will all but wipe out investors’ holdings.
Drayson’s departure from Sensyne Health was announced yesterday in a stock exchange filing which also said the firm had secured a £15m emergency fund that will hit shareholders’ stakes.
The package, which will involve “lots” of redundancies, will prevent Sensyne from collapsing.
The firm said without the funds “the company is unlikely to be able to continue to trade beyond this month”.
Alex Snow, a former banker, will take over as chief from Drayson.
The development is the latest in a string of crises that have engulfed Sensyne since it listed on London’s junior AIM market in 2018.
Several directors have left the firm in those four years.
Sensyne forked out £380,000 to settle an employment tribunal claim lodged by Lorimer Headley, its former finance director.
The firm was censured and fined £406,000 in November by the London Stock Exchange for “serious failures” over covert £1m bonuses paid to executives.
The £15m rescue package will effectively wipe out existing shareholders’ investments by allowing creditors to convert loans into shares.
Drayson and his wife are Sensyne’s largest shareholders with a collective 22.8 per cent stake.
Drayson said he had generated “key partnerships with the NHS, US health systems and the life sciences industry, built a database of over 48 million anonymised patient records and won awards for its innovative AI-enabled software that has helped care for millions of patients across the UK”.
“I am pleased that the company has secured the finance to build on this foundation and that the new chief executive and noteholders have committed to maintain the mission and values of the company that I founded,” he added.