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Post by mnholdem on Oct 29, 2014 17:09:01 GMT -5
Some folks are posting for shareholders to vote out Sanofi's Board at the annual shareholders meeting and reinstating Viehbacher as Chairman and CEO. One guy calls them fools for insisting that they remain a viva la french company instead of a global giant. Hopefully, Sanofi's strategy of providing support and solutions geared toward the physician remains intact.
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Post by jpg on Oct 29, 2014 18:11:34 GMT -5
Some folks are posting for shareholders to vote out Sanofi's Board at the annual shareholders meeting and reinstating Viehbacher as Chairman and CEO. One guy calls them fools for insisting that they remain a viva la french company instead of a global giant. Hopefully, Sanofi's strategy of providing support and solutions geared toward the physician remains intact. I doubt a French board can ever be dislodged... That certainly would be a big big deal in corporate France. IMO Sanofi is big enough and has to many stockholders to threaten the board. They are the defacto rulers and shareholders go along for the ride or not... This being said why would Sanofi change their strategy meaningfully? It wouldn't serve anyone's interest including that of the board. I think this could be a clash of corporate cultures more then anything else. A point of view no one seems to be articulating in the AngloSaxon press is could changing the CEO actually be good for Sanofi? Could the board actually have a point and that a new CEO could take Sanofi to the next level? JPG |
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Post by jpg on Oct 29, 2014 18:31:57 GMT -5
Interesting take from a well connected French paper: www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2014/10/29/le-patron-de-sanofi-sur-le-point-d-etre-debarque_4514096_3234.htmlIt is probably as close to reality as we will get in all this. It's in French obviously but a Google translator will help! Jobs in France and moving to Boston seems to be 2 important additional motivators. The fact he wasn't French was also directly mentioned as a reason for him not having originally been given the title of Chairman and CEO. The 2 deflections that Weinberg seemed to make during his CC seem hard to believe after reading this article. Interesting that L'Oreal holds 9% of the shares and 2 board seats. All in all another reassuring article for future Sanofi strategy as far as we (MNKD) are/ is concerned. JPG PS: sorry for posting so much but I really want to understand this Sanofi thing and am forcing my musings on this poor board! |
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Post by babaoriley on Oct 29, 2014 18:44:12 GMT -5
Baba, it's obvious that SNY firing this Viehbacher guy is good news for MNKD. That's why MNKD is down today. If this were bad news or no news, the share price would be up. History trumps. It's funny how during the past 10 years of bungling by MNKD's management that the board can't find anyone to fire. Good stuff, Spiro! MannKind is a kinder, gentler place to work. And your reasoning on good news/bad news is simply unassailable! I thought we held up pretty well in the face of the "good" news. I was not displeased with the share price action today. |
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Post by EveningOfTheDay on Oct 29, 2014 22:54:00 GMT -5
From the article in Le Monde,
"Durant l’été, M. Viehbacher a en effet appris que M. Weinberg avait commencé à lui chercher un successeur."
During the summer, Mr. Viehbacher had learned that Mr. Weinberg has started to look for a successor.
This is what I speculated earlier today. I think he was on his way out and the failure to communicate to the board the sale of out of patent products was just an excuse, or the last drop if you wish. This would point to the fact that the board knowing Mr. Viehbacher could be on it way out, did allow the deal with Mannking to move forward.
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Post by EveningOfTheDay on Oct 30, 2014 0:44:13 GMT -5
Interesting take from a well connected French paper: www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2014/10/29/le-patron-de-sanofi-sur-le-point-d-etre-debarque_4514096_3234.htmlIt is probably as close to reality as we will get in all this. It's in French obviously but a Google translator will help! Jobs in France and moving to Boston seems to be 2 important additional motivators. The fact he wasn't French was also directly mentioned as a reason for him not having originally been given the title of Chairman and CEO. The 2 deflections that Weinberg seemed to make during his CC seem hard to believe after reading this article. Interesting that L'Oreal holds 9% of the shares and 2 board seats. All in all another reassuring article for future Sanofi strategy as far as we (MNKD) are/ is concerned. JPG PS: sorry for posting so much but I really want to understand this Sanofi thing and am forcing my musings on this poor board! After reading the article, by the way thanks for finding it, I reaffirm my suspicions that this was a power play that went wrong for Chris Viehbacher. Knowing that the board was already planning to replace him, he decided to play the what-is-my-status-here right before the CC. Hoping that the board would think about it twice before sacking him on the basis that this might not be good for the stock price. His play backfired and the board moved to remove him immediately. We will have to wait and see who takes over the job, but truly I do not see Sanofi changing its attitude towards Mannkind at all, if anything, like JPG and other have pointed out, Sanofi now has even a bigger interest in things going smoothly. It will be interesting to see what is the new CEO position regarding acquisitions, but once again, I do not expect any set plans to change much. |
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Post by kc on Oct 30, 2014 9:52:40 GMT -5
They should have never allowed Viehbacher to have delivered the CC. The board had already made the decesion the day before and should have sacked him at that time. Viehbacher was a member of the board and the board met for lunch the day before without him.
Long term I don't think this has any impact on MannKind as it took the entire board's vote to approve the deal.
I have been engaged with couple of boards of companies doing over 2 Billion in revenue. They have struggled with board size (too large) and I found it interesting that Weinberg mentioned that they are in the process of restructing their board size. One of the biggest issues companies are reviewing is board size as nobody knows the right number of directors. 18 is too many and perhaps 8 or 9 not enough.
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