Sandell Nominates 6 for Ethan Allen Board

September 15, 2015  by in Financial Reports, Industry   

Sandell holds about 5.5 percent of Ethan Allen’s shares.

The six nominees, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, are as follows:

Edward Glickman, former president of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust; kathy Herbert, former executive vice president of human resources for Albertson’s; Rhcard Mansouri, managing director of Sandell; Annelise Osborne, senior vice president at Moody’s Investor Services; Ken Pilot, former president at ABC Carpet & Home; and Alex Wolf, former partner and managing director of Cerberus Capital Management.

Sandell argues that Ethan Allen shareholders have “suffered years of underperformance versus the company’s own selected proxy peers” under the current management and board.

The investor’s latest release gets downright nasty saying the company is “rife with poor governance practices in the form of a stale and entrenched board led by what in our opinion is the prototypical ‘imperial CEO’.”

Sandell continues to argue that Ethan Allen’s real estate holdings should be sold to tap into the “hundreds of millions of dollars of trapped value ….”

The firm goes on to blast the board and Farooq Kathwari, chairman, CEO and president, for not forming an executive succession plan.