(Reuters) – Bath & Body Works Inc said on Monday investor Third Point’s potential proxy contest is misguided and is a result of the specialty retailer not willing to appoint the hedge fund’s former co-chief investment officer to its board.
Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb had last week told the company that Third Point was planning a board challenge as the addition of new directors does not address his concerns about governance, capital allocation and executive pay.
Bath & Body Works said in the last twelve months the board has appointed four highly qualified directors, of which Lucy Brady, a senior executive at Conagra Brands, was proposed by Third Point.
In a letter to its shareholders, the company said the potential proxy contest was due to the board’s unwillingness to appoint Loeb’s former partner Munib Islam to the board.
Islam, who played a key role in Third Point’s activist campaigns, left the firm in 2020 and is now a senior executive at LTS One, an investment partnership.
While it has taken “reasonable” steps to avoid a proxy fight, Bath & Body Works said it is “disappointing and unfortunate” that it will have to spend more time on this despite efforts to engage productively with the hedge fund.
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Third Point, which had in December said it had a roughly 6% stake, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
(Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
