In­flu­en­tial proxy firms kick back at ac­tivists’ de­mands for Brent Saun­ders to give up his chair­man’s ti­tle at Al­ler­gan

Af­ter sav­ing Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb last week from the em­bar­rass­ing dis­as­ter of see­ing its $74 bil­lion Cel­gene buy­out go south, the proxy ad­vi­so­ry firms In­sti­tu­tion­al Share­hold­er Ser­vices and Glass Lewis are back at it to­day pro­tect­ing Al­ler­gan CEO Brent Saun­ders in his fight to pre­serve his con­trol of both the CEO and chair­man ti­tles.

Bil­lion­aire and Ap­paloosa chief David Tep­per has been rais­ing a ruckus about the state of af­fairs at Al­ler­gan $AGN, which has pushed Saun­ders to loosen up and add ex-Cel­gene chief Bob Hug­in to the board, with spe­cial in­flu­ence over M&A strat­e­gy. But Saun­ders has drawn the line on his dual roles, say­ing any split with an in­de­pen­dent chair­man can come when he steps down.

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