For­mer Pfiz­er CEO and CFO flip on ac­tivist and say they now sup­port com­pa­ny

In a late-night re­ver­sal, Pfiz­er’s for­mer CEO and CFO is­sued a state­ment say­ing they now sup­port the com­pa­ny’s ex­ist­ing man­age­ment over ac­tivist in­vestor Star­board Val­ue.

Frank D’Ame­lio

“We have de­cid­ed not to be in­volved in the ef­forts of Star­board Val­ue re­gard­ing Pfiz­er,” ex-CEO Ian Read and ex-CFO Frank D’Ame­lio said in a state­ment late Wednes­day night. “We are ful­ly sup­port­ive of Pfiz­er Chair­man & CEO Al­bert Bourla, se­nior man­age­ment and the board, and we are con­fi­dent that over time they will de­liv­er share­hold­er val­ue.”

Read and D’Ame­lio had been as­so­ci­at­ed with Star­board’s ac­tivist stake in Pfiz­er just days ago, and peo­ple fa­mil­iar with their role said that they’d been ap­proached by the in­vestor and were “hap­py to help” with its com­ing cam­paign against the drug­mak­er.

The rea­son for their shock­ing re­ver­sal wasn’t clear. A per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter said that lat­er Wednes­day af­ter­noon, the for­mer ex­ec­u­tives took steps to be­gin is­su­ing the state­ment, which came out af­ter 9 p.m. East­ern time.

Read and D’Ame­lio didn’t re­spond to re­quests for com­ment late Wednes­day night.

Bourla and Pfiz­er’s lead in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tor are slat­ed to meet with Star­board next week, ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter.

Star­board, which has tak­en a $1 bil­lion stake in the com­pa­ny, is said to be plan­ning a push for strat­e­gy changes at Pfiz­er, whose stock $PFE has lost half its val­ue since a pan­dem­ic-era peak.

The un­usu­al back­ing of the for­mer top man­agers lent a de­gree of mo­men­tum to Star­board’s ef­fort. How their re­ver­sal will im­pact the ac­tivist’s ef­fort is un­clear.

Pfiz­er de­clined to com­ment. Star­board didn’t re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Ed­i­tor’s note: This sto­ry has been up­dat­ed with Pfiz­er’s de­cline to com­ment.