The value of the Brisbane company has jumped by almost $100 million since it announced its chief executive, Emma Shand, saw the writing on the wall and resigned. It also said it would undertake a complete review of operations and retained an option to sell assets.

On the day after the decision, asset manager TAMIM’s head of Australian equities Ron Shamgar said: “When a company CEO gets the boot and shares go up 16 per cent, you know what the market thought of them.”

Since then, the price has moved higher and is now up 45 per cent for the week.

It’s not entirely clear whether Shand had any options to resign, but the wording of the announcement indicated she left after the new direction was made clear to her.

The share price bounce could also have been factor of EML’s changing strategy and the potential of a break-up or sell off.

But clearly someone appeared to twig that something was going on at the Brisbane based company last week when its shares spiked 12 per cent, well ahead of any announcement.

Despite the better performance the company’s shares are still down 70 per cent on a year ago because investors are not satisfied that the company will get out of a debacle in Ireland where regulators have pulled up the company’s subsidiary over governance issues related to anti-money laundering and terrorism financing.

The Irish Central Bank told the company a month ago it was not satisfied with its remediation plan which was clearly the last straw for the board.