Courtesy of Benzinga.
The long drawn standoff between Dow Chemical Co (NYSE: DOW) and Dan Loeb’s Third Point LLC is finally seeing closure with the company agreeing to adding four new independent director to its Board as part of an agreement with the hedge fund.
Steve Miller, non-executive chairman at AIG, recently talked with Bloomberg’s Betty Liu regarding him joining Dow’s Board and how Dow Chemicals and Third Point reached a settlement.
"Well, I think ultimately both sides concluded that it was going to be far better to come to a consensual settlement rather than carrying on a proxy battle, which is both expensive and distracting to the company and so on and therefore the two sides were able to come to an agreement that includes four new directors," Miller said.
When queried about whether the settlement includes anything else, Miller replied that there are "other things to go along with it." According to Miller, "the main thing that Third Point wanted was to have some fresh blood come on the board with some new ideas for how to improve the return on assets of this very fine company and I am looking forward to that challenge.
"First order of business is going to be to become familiar with the assets of the company. It’s a very complex company, all over the globe; it's not public information as to exactly how they make their money. They are both upstream and downstream in their production of commodities and finished products," Miller added.
Miller highlighted that this settlement between Third Point and Dow Chemical includes a stand-still between the two entities, such that Loeb won’t be launching a proxy battle against the company.
Dow Chemical was recently trading at $52.45, up 1.9 percent.
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