Lara Croft firm SCi's boss fired in clearout

Jane Cavanagh, the £600,000-a-year chief executive of SCi who has been fêted as one of Britain's most successful businesswomen, was today dumped by the company she created 20 years ago.

Cavanagh is the victim of a management clearout in which her husband Bill Ennis, the group's head of publishing, and long-standing studios chief Rob Murphy have also been shown the door.

Cavanagh and her colleagues are going after a night of the long knives on the SCi board prompted by the growing anger of major shareholders, including it is understood, Robert Tchenguiz.

The property tycoon has extended his run of recent poor investments - large stakes in Sainsbury's and pubs group M&B have turned into turkeys - with a 15% holding in SCi bought at the top of the market when the shares were trading at 500p.

Since then the shares have crashed, exacerbated by another profit warning last week. Today they clawed back 4p to 52p. At the current price, Tchenguiz is reckoned to have lost around £80 million.

Cavanagh and the others, who between them are likely to get more than £1.5 million compensation, are leaving the company with immediate effect after being given their cards by chairman Tim Ryan.

Public relations executive Ryan took over as chairman at SCi 18 months ago after a corporate governance stink concerning Cavanagh's continuing role as both chief executive and chairman of the company.

Ryan is chairman of the Bell Pottinger group and a former PR man at NTL (now Virgin Media) and Skye-Pharma. The three other non-executive directors are Roger Ames, the music executive currently up to his ears with EMI's problems, Deutsche banker Don Johnston and a former SCi finance director Nigel Wayne.

The breakdown of relations on the SCi board was indicated by Ryan's refusal today to pay tribute to Cavanagh in the company's statement to the Stock Exchange. It said he has appointed finance director Phil Rogers as chief executive. Rogers has been at the company less than a year, having joined from its larger US rival Electronic Arts.

Last week the company admitted it would not make any money this year and that its latest Lara Croft title, Tomb Raider: Underworld, would be delayed until next Christmas. The Tomb Raider franchise was orginally developed by Eidos, which was bought by SCi, making Cavanagh champion of the British gaming scene.

Last week's SCi announcement also warned that nothing might come of continuing speculation that a buyer - possibly France's Ubisoft or the US giant Time Warner - was being lined up for a bid for SCi.