The Lagardère group, active in edition and media business and in the sport sponsoring, holds also with 7,5% the French private controlling interest in the aircraft and defense EADS group. The French-American arbitrageur, a former US Marine, specializes into «value awakening» shareholder engagement; he presented two resolutions in view of the up-coming April 27th AGM of this limited partnership company with an attempt to transform it into a regular limited company.
Guy Wyser-Pratte wants first to be elected as a Director and requests the general meeting to amend the current company regime; he considers, along with many investors, that the limited partnership structure offers unjustified powers to Arnaud Lagardère, resulting in a discount for the company share price. He also questions the strategy, underlines the lousy performance of the company whose stock price has lost some 50% since three years.
Guy Wyser-Pratte, a seasoned financier with recognized international financial background, could be the first minority shareholder to be elected as "hostile candidate" in France: he might also obtain some changes in favour of better treatment of shareholders at Lagardère. The reputation of Arnaud Lagardère with its sharehodlers will be damaged by the late disclosure of his coverage by the purchase of put from Calyon (a bank seating at the Lagardère Board represented by René Carron) in 2007 at the time when he was announcing the increase of his stake from 5% up to 10% in Lagardère. Sure the succcessor of René Carron should be opposed to and Wyser-Pratte elected instead !
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