Alk­er­mes hands a board seat to Alex Den­ner's Saris­sa af­ter fac­ing re­newed proxy pres­sure to 're­fresh' di­rec­tors

It’s been sev­er­al months since Alk­er­mes chief Richard Pops won over ac­tivists at El­liott Ad­vi­sors with a grand plan to shake up the com­pa­ny. Now, fac­ing new pres­sure from Alex Den­ner at Saris­sa Cap­i­tal, the CEO is mak­ing good on his promise to “re­fresh” the board of di­rec­tors.

Fol­low­ing “con­struc­tive di­a­logue” with Saris­sa — which owns a 5% stake in Alk­er­mes — the com­pa­ny said on Fri­day that it’s al­low­ing the ac­tivist fund to tap a new di­rec­tor to the board. It’s the lat­est move in a board re­fresh­ment pro­gram Alk­er­mes ini­ti­at­ed two years ago, which has since seen the ap­point­ment of four in­de­pen­dent mem­bers.

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