After months of speculation, Pescanova’s sidelined president Manuel Fernández de Sousa finally abandoned the post on 17 July, opening up the way for the restructuring of Spain’s troubled fisheries to frozen food giant. Having taking over the running of the company from his father in 1980, he now faces a High Court appearance in October over his mishandling of the multinational group, a month after a new board of directors is due to be elected. Fernández de Sousa’s resignation came after a ‘forensic’ report was presented by auditors KPMG, after which he admitted that there had been “errors in his management”. According to KPMG, the group’s board set up a network of subsidiaries to cover mounting losses in recent years that had reached an estimated EUR3.28bn by the end of last year. It accused the Pescanova management of “consciously planning” a system that had hidden their actions. The group’s financial dilemma came to light at the end of February after failing to submit full year financial figures for 2012, and went into receivership soon after. While Deloitte, who have been administering the company since March, continue to work on restructuring and refinancing a group that employs more than 10,000 people in 26 countries, Fernández de Sousa maintained for weeks that what he did was not “deliberately fraudulent” but aimed at keeping the group in business.