UNCOOKED ALERT: Aurinia Pharmaceuticals said to ... - Part 9
One of Aurinia Pharmaceutical's largest shareholders has formally submitted an application for a seat on the board of the US-listed company and reiterated its request for the group to consider a formal sale of the business.
The MKT Tactical Fund, which owns 3.2pc of Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, submitted the request for the board seat this week to Aurinia's chief executive, Peter Greenleaf, and chairman, George Milne Junior.
The move comes after MKT wrote an open letter late last week asking other investors to join the fund in requesting the board carry out a strategic review of the business and consider sale of the company before the next Annual General Meeting in June 2023.
In that letter to investors such as BlackRock, Citadel Advisors and State Street MKT urged other shareholders to vote against current management with the aim of replacing the managers, such as the current chief executive Peter Greenleaf, with a team willing to explore "strategic alternatives".
Sources familiar with the situation said MKT is particularly unhappy about the fact that the management team have been issued around $60 million worth of free shares and options in Aurinia Pharmaceuticals since Mr Greenleaf was appointed in 2019.
The letter from MKT comes amid a fresh round of takeover speculation. In late 2021 Bloomberg reported that Bristol Myers Squibb had expressed an interesting in purchasing Aurinia.
People following the situation had recently heard talk that a unknown suitor could once again be eyeing the business, with some people suggesting bankers at JP Morgan may be involved in attempting to put a deal together.
Aurinia Pharmaceuticals did not return requests for comment despite a request for comment from Betaville.
To be clear, some of this story is UNCOOKED. I have pasted the definitions of UNCOOKED below in case you don't recall their definitions.
UNCOOKED: Market gossip as Betaville receives it. This scuttlebutt has just come in and hasn't been checked with all of Betaville's well-informed RARE sources let alone formal journalistic channels (public relations executives, bankers etc). The rumour might be total codswallop, rubbish or nonsense - but then again there may be something in it, so it's worth airing on Betaville...