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Ardent Leisure chief executive officer Deborah Thomas will leave her post on July 1 with a $731,000 payout — which is her annual salary.
The company made the announcement at 5:18pm on Friday — just before the Queen's Birthday long weekend began.
Ardent Leisure is perhaps better known to consumers as the owner of Dreamworld — the Gold Coast theme park where four people died, in October 2016, due to one of its rides malfunctioning.
Ms Thomas was the boss of Ardent Leisure during that period.
The company previously announced that she would take up a new role as chief customer officer and chief operating officer from July.
However, that has now changed, and she will no longer be employed by the company after she finishes her role as CEO.
Instead, Ms Thomas has entered a "transitional consultancy agreement" with Ardent Leisure.
In its announcement to the market, Ardent Leisure explained, "Ms Thomas will provide ongoing support to the CEO, senior management and Board of Ardent in respect of the pending Coronial Inquiry into the Dreamworld tragedy".
"Ms Thomas will be paid a consultancy fee of $3,000 per day, for each day reasonably expanded in relation to the coronial inquest.
"The Board has determined this arrangement is appropriate based on external professional advice and market benchmarking."
Ardent Leisure reported a net loss of $95.2 million in the half year to December 2016.
Allan Goldin from the Australian Shareholders' Association said Ms Thomas' payout was normal practice and she should not be held entirely responsible for the company's poor handling of the Dreamworld tragedy.
"The then chairman handled it extremely badly also," he said.
"The big mistake that they made was their AGM was four days after the Dreamworld tragedy … or three days after.
"They should have opened the AGM, the chairman should have then immediately said, 'We are now going to go and adjourn this AGM for a month, two months — whatever — because it's not appropriate to hold the AGM at this time after the tragedy that just occurred'.
"That would have eliminated a whole lot of the poor media that they got.
"That was the chairman who made that mistake. Not her."
The tragedy resulted in the theme park being closed for 45 days and reduced patronage afterwards.
The company reported that its visitor numbers and revenues had improved in May — but they were still about 35 per cent lower compared to the same time last year.
Ardent Leisure shares closed 0.47 per cent higher at $2.14 on Friday (at 4:11pm) — about one hour before the company announced Ms Thomas's departure.
Topics: company-news, business-economics-and-finance, australia, qld
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