MINNEAPOLIS, MN - The push-and-pull between SuperValu and one of its shareholders Blackwells Capital continues. While SuperValu issued a letter this week asking investors to vote for its choice of directors and reject Blackwells’ nominees, Blackwells Capital released its own letter urging investors to try for a fresh slate and elect Blackwell's choice six candidates to SuperValu's Board of Directors with “critical experience in food wholesaling, retail grocer, transportation and logistics, turnaround management, and sustainability.”
“We have lost faith in the current SuperValu Board, but not in SuperValu. Blackwells has attempted to actively engage with the current Board and management in good faith and offered solutions and skills that would help stem the constant decline at SuperValu. Each time our efforts have been rejected, misrepresented, or, in our view, coopted incompetently. The current Board even refuses to sit down, face-to-face, with our highly qualified independent nominees, who offer decades more relevant experience than the current directors,” Jason Aintabi, Managing Partner, said in Blackwells Capital’s letter. “To protect the investment of all shareholders and help SuperValu achieve its full potential, Blackwells has recruited and nominated six extremely talented professionals to the company’s Board. With their extensive industry and public board experience, we are confident these nominees will better set SuperValu’s future course and more effectively oversee it.”
In the letter, the shareholder outlined “strategic and operational failures” it would like to remedy with its Board nominees, including:
- A misguided and unfocused strategy
- Value-destroying deals
- Repeated recruiting failures
- A misaligned culture and compensation system
- A lack of planning and investment in key operational areas
“While the mere prospect of our value-creating plan being implemented has led the stock to rally by more than 40 percent, we do not believe it is wise to entrust the future of SuperValu to the same individuals who have failed for so long to create long-term shareholder value,” Blackwells wrote in its letter. Instead, the shareholder suggests that its own nominees will:
- Create a culture of accountability
- Allocate shareholder capital in an optimal fashion
- Insist upon a performance-driven operational approach that is efficient and sustainable
- Supporting management
- Eliminating conflicts of interest
- Carefully reviewing, and objectively assessing, all avenues of valu creation
To read the letter in its entirety, click here.
With the official vote on the calendar for August 16, 2018, which route will investors take: SuperValu’s or Blackwells Capital? AndNowUKnow will continue to report as the date looms closer.
