Blackwells Capital wants to overhaul Supervalu’s board

On March 22, Supervalu confirmed Blackwells Capital had provided them with a notice of intention to nominate six director candidates to stand for election to the Board of Directors at the company’s 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

The activist investor had announced its intent to nominate three director candidates to the Board last month. In a statement, Supervalu said Blackwells now proposed to replace six of nine board members in an attempt to seek control, without paying a premium to all stockholders and was seeking representation that was highly disproportionate to Blackwells’ stake (about 2 percent of Supervalu shares).

Supervalu’s directors announced they were rapidly and strategically transforming the business to be the grocery supplier of choice for retailers throughout the US. Their plans to achieve this will be through the execution of their wholesale strategy which has helped the company add more than $5 billion in run rate sales in the last two years to bring the wholesale business to nearly $13 billion, or approximately 75 percent of total annual sales.

The company also said it had a strong and experienced board with two of its nine highly qualified directors having joined in the past two years, and six of them having served for less than five years.

The company has been making improvements to improve its balance sheet. Early in March it announced the sale of 21 of its Farm Fresh and Pharmacy stores.