Endeavour executive chairman Ari Mervis is facing a restive market – investors and brokers, at two private meetings in two weeks, raised governance issues and voiced concerns about a lack of a permanent chief executive.

The company behind the Dan Murphy’s and BWS liquor chains and a string of hotels announced Mervis as its executive chairman five months after long-serving chief executive Steven Donohue said he would retire. Mervis had been chairman, and Endeavour had struggled to find a permanent replacement for Donohue, whose last day was on Monday.