Hestia Capital Management, one of the largest shareholders in Pitney Bowes, is planning to nominate a “majority slate” of board candidates at the shipping-and-mailing firm’s 2023 annual meeting of shareholders as it looks to oust the company’s current CEO and chairman, according to a report by CTInsider.
The activist hedge fund, which owns a 7.1% stake in the company, revealed in November that it was pushing for a raft of changes at Pitney Bowes, including the possible sale of the underperforming e-commerce division of the business. But now it wants to see President and CEO Marc Lautenbach and board Chairman Michael Roth replaced due to “operational underperformance” and “poor capital allocation”.
The report cites a letter sent to shareholders by Hestia founder and CIO Kurt Wolf as saying that it would like to install a “highly qualified proposed interim chief executive officer supported by a talented group of operators and strategists”.
Wolf wrote in the letter: “This degree of change is clearly needed to help set a new value-creation strategy after 10+ years of strategic missteps, poor execution and the significant destruction of stockholder and enterprise value under the current board.”
