Ardent Leisure shareholders face a tough choice in coming weeks. Ardent Leisure, the owner of DreamWorld, has received a three-year $69.9 million loan from the Queensland government. Ardent Leisure Chanticleer is Australia's pre-eminent business column.Ardent Leisure shareholders face a tough choice in coming weeks. Shareholders in Ardent Leisure Group want the company held to account for its behaviour before and after the 2016 incident. Ardent shares have recovered 13 per cent to $2.13 after touching a low of $1.88 on June 30. Shareholders of the company that owns Dreamworld have gone to court to seek compensation for losses following the Thunder River Rapids Ride tragedy which killed four people. Do they trust the board which let them down in the first place to come up with a credible plan to turn things around? Weiss and Seymour are also seeking board seats, along with two other new directors.It is rare for so-called activist shareholders to spend serious money on their own external reports, particularly when they do not have the luxury of being able to access Ardent's books. "We have been very disappointed with the management of the company over the last 12 to 18 months and their communication," Wilson Asset Management chief investment officer Chris Stott says.While Wilson has not made any firm decision yet about whether it will support Ariadne, Stott says Ardent's strategy has been confusing and it is not happy with the mixed messages from its executives around possible land sales. In this case Ariadne paid a US consulting firm to look at Ardent but it will not say who they are for legal reasons. Weiss, who has advised Westfield and Solomon Lews' Premier Investments on store rollouts, personally visited some of the Main Event centres and realised they had more potential. Credit Suisse is advising Ardent, which also has consultants LEK reviewing its strategy. "Ardent strongly denies any contraventions as alleged and believes the proceedings to be without merit," its statement said. Our contention is the current board has overseen such a substantial decline in value and needs strengthening," Weiss told this column.The fight will be focused around the strategy to turn things around as well as the new board appointments.Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.Fund managers have gobbled up 20 million Sydney Airport shares left over from the company's equity raising. Do they trust the board which let them down in the first place to come up with a credible plan to turn things around? Shareholders have filed a class action against Dreamworld's parent company Ardent Leisure. Where governments aren't stepping in, shareholders often are. It has also flagged surplus land sales and plans to fix Dreamworld. * A class action is filed against Ardent Leisure by the company's shareholders, with the first case management hearing listed in the Federal Court for July 30.
In a class action, they have asked the Federal Court to have Ardent Leisure compensate them for financial losses due to an inflated share price before, and the exacerbated losses since, four Dreamworld customers were killed on a ride that was meant to be safe. The consultant has also done work for Dave The fix-up plan includes a gain of $425 million from rolling out another 24 Main Event centres in the United States, $175 million from turning around existing centres and $300 million from getting people back into Dreamworld on the Gold Coast and surplus land sales.Ardent responded on Wednesday, attacking Ariadne's proposal as a "vaguely expressed plan" which includes initiatives already being explored by the Ardent board. Ardent Leisure’s shares fell 7% in the final hour of trade after the incident and the company has since struggled to increase profits and win back investor trust.