Dan Wagner, the outspoken chief executive of Bright Station, yesterday confirmed that he plans to quit the board after seven tempestuous years.
The decision is likely to lead to the break-up of a technology company that has never quite persuaded the City of its merits.
Details of the plan, disclosed last week by the Guardian, were accompanied by figures showing that Bright Station has just £7.4m left in the bank and needs to raise further funds.
Shares in Bright Station, which have fallen by 95% over the past year, slipped a further 5.5p to 15.25p, valuing the firm at £26.4m. The fall places in danger a plan for Credit Suisse First Boston to issue a convertible bond to fund the group. The investment bank says it will provide the money only if Bright Station's market capitalisation is £30m or more.
Mr Wagner, 36, has quit the board after failing to persuade the City to share his bullish evaluation of the group he floated on the stock market and amid unease within the firm that the baggage his reputation brings with him is holding back business.
The fast-talking former salesman has not been afraid to go against the grain. Last year he snapped up 44 software programmers from Boo.com at a time when the collapsed e-tailer was a dirty word in the technology world.
But his belligerence won him many critics in the City. When Bright Station was still called Dialog, its faltering finances won it the nickname "dial-a-dog".
His image has not recovered from the ill-fated £260m acquisition of the debt-laden Knight Ridder information business which he was forced to sell on for a £90m loss. Name changes from Maid to Dialog to Bright Station have failed to erase damage.
In an illustration of his continued faith in Bright Station's non-core assets of Sparza and Office Shopper, however, Mr Wagner is in talks about making an offer to take them private.
If successful, it would leave Smartlogik, a knowledge management software product and the core of the group, as a "pure play" listed technology company.
Last year Steve Hill, the highly rated founder of US software group Inktomi, was recruited to run Smartlogik in preparation for a stock market listing of its own. But market conditions turned against a spin-off, leaving Mr Wagner with little choice but to restructure the group in a way that makes Mr Hill's team its focus.
Smartlogik insiders believe it has the potential to become as big as Autonomy, the market-leading intelligent software firm, but funding restrictions are said to have held it back. Bright Station will be renamed Smartlogik if the talks with Mr Wagner are concluded.
He will only offer a minimal sum for the businesses because the likely alternative is to close them and that would incur added costs.
Efforts have already been made to reduce costs by laying off about a quarter of the staff.
Analysts say that the performance of Bright Station's share price over the next few weeks will play a crucial part in enabling the group to secure new funds and warn that if the market capitalisation remains below £30m Mr Wagner could be forced to renegotiate less favourable terms with CSFB or another backer.
