Stormy days at Deckers. Marcato Capital Management, minority shareholder and hedge fund that has control of 8,4% of the group, at the end of October issued a statement of claim before Wilmington Chancery Court, in Delaware, to make sure that the next shareholders’ meeting (the last one was called 13 months ago), scheduled on December 14, will actually take place. They fear that the board will put off the date. Marcato is planning to make a radical adjustment to Deckers’s policy: the hedge fund wants to replace the members of the board of trustees, thus possibly preventing the modification of internal rules and the escalation of the board’s wages (36 million dollars); likewise in doing so they aim to buy time while handling creditors’ refund claims (103 million dollars). On the one hand, Marcato Capital would fancy a change of ownership, on the other hand Deckers’s top management, who had been planning to sell the group in April, has changed his mind as they expect to re-buy 400 million dollars stocks by 2020. They also want to reduce operating costs, thus saving 100 million dollars and enhancing profits.
Civil war breaks out at Deckers as minority shareholder claims board resigning, while group stops transfer
