A New York-based hedge fund has called for the heads of the two founders of Erinaceous, the troubled quoted surveyors-to-buildings management group, and a purge of other top management positions.

Fursa Alternative Strategies which has built up a 19 per cent stake in Erinaceous over the past couple of months, has called for other shareholders to back its call to remove from the board Neil Bellis, the company's founder and deputy chairman, and Lucy Cummings, the board's chief operating officer.

In return for their removal from the board, Fursa, a hedge fund that has $700 million (£343 million) of assets under management, has promised to consider supporting any new fundraising needed to keep Erinaceous afloat. Fursa also wants to install some new management of its own choosing.

A month ago Erinaceous breached its borrowing covenants and was forced to renegotiate lending terms on its £168 million of net debt at a punitive rate of almost 10 per cent. The company today has a market value of only £25 million.

Nigel Turnbull, Erinaceous's chairman, has since wrested the chief executive role from Mr Bellis. Michael Pearson resigned as finance director and he was replaced last week by Dominic Lavelle, the former finance director at Alfred McAlpine. But Mr Bellis remained on the board as deputy chairman.

Under the management changes ushered in by Mr Turnbull, Nigel Davis, the commercial director who joined the business in 2004 was also assigned the role of comany secretary, taking over from Juliet Bellis, senior partner at Juliet Bellis & Co, and wife of Mr Bellis.

But those board changes do not go far enough for Fursa, an activist hedge fund which last December was spun out of Mellon Finanncial, the American bank.

In an open letter to Erinaceous shareholders published today, Fursa, headed by William Harley, said: "We are proposing to requisition a general meeting of the company at which we would propose resolutions to remove each of Neil Bellis and Lucy Cummings from the board." No date has however yet been set for the meeting.

The letter added: "We look forward to engaging with the remaining directors of the company in helping to reconstitute the board and establish a new management team with the ultimate aim of improving the company's current financial position and increasing shareholder value."

This Spring Erinaceous shares were changing hands for as much as 389p as a four-way bid battle loomed, valuing the company at over £400 million. But by August all of the potential suitors had walked. Its shares today fell 1p to 23.5p.

One of those original suitors, Consensus Business Group, the property firm run by Vincent Tchenguiz, took another look at Erinaceous over the past three weeks but yesterday it too said it had decided to walk away from making any bid for at least the next six months.

Consensus, owner of the Chesterton estate agency chain, has reserved its right to make a fresh approach sooner for Erinaceous if the company overhauls its board of directors with fresh blood or undertakes a significant new capital raising.

Fursa's letter to shareholders talked of a "reconstituted board" and a possible "new capital injection."

Last year Erinaceous hit the headlines over a police investigation involving Ian “Flash” McGarry, a surveyor at its Dunlop Haywards subsidiary, for his role in an alleged mortgage fraud ring. Erinaceous settled out of court on a claim brought by Nationwide Building Society relating to the affair.

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