On Thursday, March 17, Sachem Head Capital Management LP and Keith Meister’s Corvex Management LP filed almost simultaneous Schedule 13D filings at Anaplan Inc. (PLAN).
The activists said they are coordinating activities and nominating four directors up for three board positions at the business planning software company.
The Deal reported earlier this month in the Activist Weekly Briefing that Sachem Head had acquired a large stake made up of both cash-settled swaps and common shares and had plans to push Anaplan to make changes. The director nomination deadline at Anaplan was March 4.
Corvex in its 13D said that on Feb. 22 it planned to nominate Meister for election to Anaplan’s board. The 13Ds said that on March 7 Meister and Sachem Head managing partner Scott Ferguson orally agreed to coordinate and cooperate in certain activities involving Anaplan.
Corvex reported that it; another fund, JS Capital Management LLC; and Sachem Head own collectively about 13 million shares, including about 2.8 million swaps, or 8.7% of Anaplan.
Sachem Head said that it was nominating three candidates, Richard M. Haddrill, Roger S. Siboni and Andrew J. Stafman, for Anaplan’s board.
Haddrill is CEO of Groop LLC, which invests in and advises growth-oriented and turnaround companies, while Siboni is an independent director at Dolby Laboratories Inc. (DLB) and the lead independent director at Coupa Software Inc. (COUP), according to relationship mapping service BoardEx. Stafman is a partner at Sachem Head.
Neither filing provided much information about the activist funds’ intentions at Anaplan, which did not return a request for comment.
Nevertheless, Corvex’s 13D said it plans to continue to communicate with Anaplan about a variety of things, including corporate structure, sale transactions and strategy. The filing added that Corvex may consider withdrawing its nomination depending on whether Sachem continues its director election effort and the company doesn’t seek to “invalidate or challenge” its efforts.
Sachem Head added in its filing that it had submitted two shareholder proposals, including one seeking to declassify Anaplan’s director elections so all board nominees are elected annually.
This article originally was posted on The Deal on March 18, 2022 by Ron Orol. View the original article here.
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About the author
Ronald Orol
Ronald Orol leads coverage of activist hedge fund managers, a high-profile group of corporate investors who press for blockbuster deals and were the subject of his book “Extreme Value Hedging: How Activist Hedge Fund Managers Are Taking on the World.” Ron produces the Activist Daily and Activist Weekly briefings, which offer exclusives, trend pieces and breaking analysis about insurgent investors and their M&A efforts. Ron also authored “Corporate Governance in the Era of Activism,” a digital handbook for CNBC’s Jim Cramer. He previously worked as a financial regulation and activism reporter at MarketWatch and Dow Jones Newswires.
