Supervisory board chairman Bogdan Topič, who was named provisional director, told the STA a new general manager would be sought and a shareholders' meeting has been called for 28 April.

The move comes less than a month after Trimo secured a loan restructuring agreement with creditors under which the core company, Trimo Investments and the Serbian subsidiary Trimo Inženjering agreed to pay down their EUR 45m debt principal to ten banks through 2017.

One of the conditions of the master restructuring agreement was change at the helm of the company.

That deal followed a debt-to-equity conversion in December that saw several banks take control of a majority stake in Trimo, ending a management buyout through Trimo Investment, which has been absorbed into the group.

Fink headed the company for 22 years, turning it from a local building materials firm into an international conglomerate with annual revenue of close to EUR 200m.

In the process she became one of the most powerful women in the Slovenian corporate world. She was declared Slovenia's most influential businesswoman by the Manager Magazine in 2005.

Fink and a group of mostly senior managers embarked on a highly leveraged management buyout through Trimo Investment in 2006, at the peak of the business cycle and the apex of buyout activity in general.

The plan ran aground at the apex of the banking crisis in Slovenia last year, when banks started making margin calls on highly risky loans in order to secure their liabilities.

The shareholders of Trimo Investment have now been wiped out, which marks the end of yet another in a series of failed management buyouts.

Fink said in a letter to employees that she invested all her energy and knowledge into overcoming the adverse economic conditions, motivated by the desire to pay down debt and whip Trimo back into shape.

Press reports in recent months suggest Fink was seen by banks as an obstacle to them taking control.