Jeffrey Smith’s Starboard Value is seeking six board seats at Rogers after building a 6.5% stake in the engineering materials manufacturer.
According to a securities filing Monday, Starboard nominated three of its own executives: Chief Executive Jeff Smith, Managing Partner Peter Feld and Partner Gavin Molinelli. It also nominated Jacques Croisetière, who currently serves as a directors of Arconic Corporation, Armand Lauzon, former CEO of C&D Technologies and Susan Schnabel, the Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of aPriori Capital Partners.
Starboard said it continues to engage in discussions with management regarding board representation and composition. Rogers’ board has 10 members, and the average tenure is 8.1 years, according to Insightia’s Governance module.
News of the possible nominations was first reported by Reuters.
Rogers shares closed at $149 per share Monday in New York, up 1.5%. However, that is still a far cry from the $235 per share they were trading at in late October before a $5.2 billion merger agreement with DuPont fell apart.
In early November, chemical giant DuPont scrapped plans to take over Rogers after failing to secure regulatory approval for the transaction in China. The original transaction, which was announced in late 2021, valued Rogers at $277 per share, a premium of more than 30% at the time.
Rogers promoted the head of its elastomeric material solutions unit, Colin Gouveia, to the CEO role after the flopped sale. Gouveia’s predecessor Bruce Hoechner is set to leave the board at the end of March.
Starboard has been quite active over the last few months, betting on enterprise software maker Salesforce, web development platform Wix.com, software company Splunk, and Vertiv, a supplier of equipment and services for data centers.
Starboard’s most recent move is a $500-million financing deal with Canada’s Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers that has pitted Smith’s fund against investment firms Luxor Capital Group, Janus Henderson, and Deep Field Asset Management.
(Added link to Starboard securities filing, details of nomination and updated share price.)