Lord Saatchi quits own advertising firm M&C Saatchi

Lord Maurice Saatchi is among four directors to quit the board of troubled advertising agency M&C Saatchi.

The media company, which issued a second profit warning in three months last week, announced after the stock market had closed that its executive director - one of its co-founders - had tendered his resignation.

All three non-executive directors had also quit, the statement said.

It said Lord Michael Dobbs - the creator of the House of Cards TV series - Sir Michael Peat, the former private secretary to Prince Charles and Lorna Tilian - the City grandee - had "stepped down" with immediate effect.

The departures followed a further collapse in the company's share price on 4 December amid revelations of a £6m overstatement of profits in addition to the weaker earnings forecast.

It was later revealed that co-founders of the group had bought new shares in the group to express their confidence in M&C Saatchi.

They were identified as chairman Jeremy Sinclair, chief executive David Kershaw and Bill Muirhead - another executive director.

Commenting on the departures, Mr Sinclair said: "We have accepted the decision of these directors to resign.

"We are determined to restore the operational performance and profitability of the business and are already implementing all of the recommendations set out in the PwC report we announced last week.

"We had started a process to reconstruct our board with new independent directors.

"This new board will have a mandate to conduct a full review of all aspects of our governance."

M&C Saatchi shares were 64% down in the year-to-date on Tuesday night.