Thursday, August 16, 2007

Chicago Daily Herald: Motorola rebuffs dissident investor


Daily Herald Business Writer
akukec@dailyherald.com
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2007 in the Chicago Daily Herald

A Florida-based consultant said Wednesday he’ll continue his campaign to oust Motorola Chief Executive Ed Zander, despite what he called a brush-off from the Schaumburg company’s board.

Eric Jackson, president of Jackson Leadership Systems Inc., a governance consulting firm in Naples, Fla., said he has about 130 shareholders with collectively about 600,000 Motorola shares who support his plan to turn around the beleaguered company.

He submitted his plan to some board members and sought a meeting with them. Instead, he said he received a brief letter from the board on Wednesday.

Motorola executives have said they support Zander, and the board has not been looking to replace him. Calls and e-mails to Motorola were not returned Wednesday.

“I am now distributing this (his plan) to all the large shareholders I’ve been in touch with for the past month and am using this to call for more aggressive actions on the part of shareholders seeking change,” Jackson said.

Jackson, who owns about 100 Motorola shares, previously campaigned against former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who resigned under fire a few months ago. Jackson included videos about Semel on YouTube and a page on Flickr.com as part of that campaign. Jackson started a campaign against Zander after the company’s profits and global market share shrunk, more layoffs were announced and share value eroded.

Sphere: Related Content

0 comments: