Lines Overseas Management announced yesterday that its board had confirmed the appointment of managing director Scott Lines as president as of January 1 this year, the same day the board accepted his father Donald?s resignation from the post. Scott Lines will remain managing director of the company.

The board?s announcement about the senior Lines? resignation comes a month after it announced that the chairman of LOM?s Audit Committee, Susan Wilson, resigned as a director of the company effective February 26 this year.

Donald Lines, who will continue as chairman of the LOM Group of Companies, only became president six months ago when his other son Brian stepped down in a bid to improve the company?s ability to resolve US Securities and Exchange Commission probes of alleged securities fraud involving Sedona Software Solutions and SHEP Technologies.

Both Donald Lines and Ms Wilson were briefly caught up in the SEC investigations after the SEC filed a report last year claiming that it had served subpoenas on Mr. Lines while he was in the US and alleged that Ms Wilson had told a LOM auditor that tapes pertinent to the SEC investigation may have been destroyed. Mr. Lines denied that he was ever served and Ms Wilson countered the accusations about the tapes. LOM has since filed a motion to strike the report containing the allegations.

Ms Wilson has been replaced as chairman of the Audit Committee by Frank Penny, the board announced yesterday. The president of a Toronto-based administration company, and a former accounting lecturer at the University of Toronto and accountant with Coopers & Lybrand in Toronto, has been a member of the LOM (Holdings) Limited board of directors since its inception, and was a previous member of the Audit Committee.

Bermudian Glen C. Smith, J.P. has also been appointed to LOM?s board of directors. The founder and CEO of International Bonded Couriers of Bermuda Ltd and ZipX Freight Limited, until they were sold to Bermuda Aviation Services Ltd. in late 2004, is also a director of Keytech Limited, chairman of Logic Communications Limited, deputy chairman of the United Bermuda Party, and on the board of governors of Somersfield Academy.

LOM Holdings intends to acquire the listed securities pursuant to a securities repurchase programme.

?In view of the disparity between the current share price and the current book value of shares, the Board of Directors of the Company has authorised management to purchase shares for cancellation at a cost not to exceed $1 million,? the company said in a statement.

LOM shares last traded at $2.90, 77 percent of their book value. During 2005 to date the Company repurchased 167,900 shares.

LOM?s board of directors also announced yesterday that they had approved the declaration of a special dividend in the amount of $1 per share to be paid on April 7 to shareholders of record on March 31. As a result, the Directors agreed to reduce by one-third the exercise price of the 800,000 options outstanding which expire by December 31.