Earlier this month Western Gate Private Investments, which represents the private family office of Luis Amaral and owns a 9.7 per cent stake in the drinks maker, publicly demanded Mr Heath's departure and the addition of two new independent directors to the board.
It explicitly wanted to push Mr Heath out and hire an executive search firm to identify his replacement as it felt the 'root and branch' review aimed at tackling the problems in Poland was unsatisfactory.
The board's response to this - as one would expect - was defiant, arguing that Mr Amaral was conflicted given that he is the largest shareholder in Eurocash, one of Stock Spirits' main customers in its biggest market, Poland.
Stiff drink needed
But just two weeks after Western Gate's move, Mr Heath has decided to take "early retirement". He said he and the board had been "reviewing group succession plans for some time and we felt that now was the right time for a change of leadership". The timing does feel slightly convenient, although chairman David Maloney said in the stock market announcement Western Gate's actions had "clearly interrupted our careful planning and so we decided to accelerate the CEO process".
Investors still might find this difficult to swallow, especially as the review of its Polish operations kickstarted by Mr Heath seemed to have yielded some early results. Click here for a quick visual overview of the Stock Spirits business.
In its first quarter update last week, the company said its Polish business had returned to profitability having registered a loss in the same quarter of the previous year. Mr Heath credited this to the review, which he said was "clearly delivering results".
Then a day later the company announced it had hired Marek Sypek as managing director of its Polish business from June, showing yet more progress was being made. Maybe Mr Heath saw this as 'job done'. Either way, Miroslaw 'Mirek' Stachowicz, who has been a non-executive director since November, will be the interim chief executive. The annual general meeting is on 23 May and it seems investors might have to wait until then to find out who will be getting the full-time top job.
Here comes the gloating
Western Gate has, unsurprisingly, welcomed Mr Heath's retirement and reiterated its view "a different skill-set is necessary to turn around the Polish business and regain the company’s market leading position in country". It added the chief executive should be based in Poland given the "crucial turnaround task cannot be done by 'remote control' from Buckinghamshire".
Western Gate welcomed the interim appointment and Mr Sypek's role as the Poland managing director but added it would still be proposing those two non-executive directors be added to the board.
Mr Amaral said the company's corporate costs in the 2015 financial year were "very high", and suggested they mainly comprise the UK head office where the company has no major revenue-generating operations.
"Whilst M&A should rightly form part of the company's future, for now, we would like to see management focus on addressing the very serious concerns we have highlighted," he added.
