An activist investor in C&C Group has urged the company to appoint two new directors to its board.
Engine Capital, which last month called on C&C Group to consider selling up, has proposed “two highly qualified candidates” be elected to the company’s board of directors at its forthcoming AGM.
It said its two board nominees, Ryan Dubin and Alan Hibben, were “committed to entering the boardroom with an open mind, a sense of urgency and a focus on creating long-term shareholder value”.
It noted current C&C directors owned no C&C shares, with its entire board possessing only a 0.05% stake, held almost entirely by chair and interim CEO Ralph Findlay.
Unlike C&C’s current leadership, Dubin and Hibben had committed to buying shares in the company personally, and would therefore have “skin in the game”, Engine Capital said.
The current board had “insufficient financial skillsets, especially in the areas of capital allocation, capital markets and M&A”, it added.
Responding, C&C Group said it had “always engaged openly with its shareholders, and will continue to do so”.
It added it was reviewing the contents of Engine’s latest letter and would “provide a response in due course”.
Engine Capital describes itself as a “value-oriented special situations fund that invests both actively and passively in companies undergoing change”. It first invested in C&C Group four years ago and currently holds a 5% stake in the Tennent’s brand owner.
Last month, its managing partner Arnaud Ajdler penned an open letter describing C&C Group as a “perennial underperformer” that had been blighted by “structural and self-inflicted problems”.
C&C Group’s ought to consider an outright sale which, based on “relevant and comparable transactions” could see shareholders receive a 58% premium on the company’s current trading price, Ajdler added.
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