Splendid stoush at ACS in Dallas TX

There's a splendid stoush at the top of ACS. Darwin Deason, board chairman and a major shareholder has formally called on all his fellow directors to resign, saying they have lost shareholder (read: Deason) support. Deason will present a slate of his own directors at the next annual general meeting in May, he says.

The directors of ACS have been fighting furiously for months over a proposed takeover of the publicly traded company by Cerberus, a private equity group which Deason thought he had engineered.

Most of the argument was about who could vote on the deal.

Cerberus recently announced they had withdrawn their offer, and share prices have dropped. The recriminations began.

Deason says in a statement today: "Debating the merits of these claims at this point is counter-productive because it would only draw more attention to the existing controversy surrounding the Board."

They don't make soap operas this good.

E-ZPass tolls continue to be processed as usual at the huge E-ZPass service centers operated by ACS in New York, New Jersey and Maryland.

TERMINOLOGY: 'stoush' is an all-in wild drunken brawl apparently going back to the days when the Australian version of Prohibition was in effect - no sale of alcohol after 6pm. Stoushes often occurred when they tried to clear the pubs at 6pm.

There was much sound and fury and some broken furniture but, at the end of it all, rarely any serious injuries.

As a teenager in the 1950s your editor lived right opposite such a pub south of Melbourne Australia.

Neither American nor British english have an adequate synonym.

NOTE: ACS headquartered in Dallas Texas is a computer services firm doing back office processing which bought its toll business from Lockheed Martin and bears no relationship to the ACS active in pursuing toll concessions which is an international infrastructure group based in Madrid Spain.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-11-01