A shareholder of Canaccord Genuity Group is calling for the departure of four directors from the board of directors who were members of a special committee which opposed an offer to buy the company by a group of employees led by the management of the business.
Skky Capital is requesting a shareholders’ meeting to remove Gillian Denham, Charles Bralver, Dipesh Shah and Sally Tennant from the board and elect two new independent directors.
The firm, which selected Terrence Lyons and Lars Rodert, says it has lost faith in the special committee and the board and says selling the company in a single transaction, to a single buyer, provides deal certainty to an attractive valuation and is preferable to a sale of its separate assets.
Skky Capital, which holds an 8.8% stake in Canaccord, wants to hold the shareholders’ meeting on May 10 at the latest.
The special committee indicated last month that it would recommend that shareholders not accept the takeover offer after an independent valuation prepared for it by Royal Bank of Canada placed the fair market value of Canaccord shares in a range between $12.75 and $15.75 per share as of February 15.
Canaccord’s management-led employee group, which offered $11.25 a share for the company, called Royal’s valuation “unrealistic and flawed.”