Alternative Market Briefing

Update: Greenlight Capital speaks out to investors and the media, pushing for support of its Apple campaign

Friday, February 22, 2013

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: As Opalesque has reported, hedge fund activist David Einhorn and his firm Greenlight Capital have launched a fight over a change to Apple's corporate charter that would require shareholder approval for the issuance of preferred stock. Einhorn says that the change is a bad idea, and spoke directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook on the matter. He's also filed a lawsuit claiming that the vote as currently slated to happen during Apple's annual shareholder meeting at the end of this month is a violation of SEC rules. Since then, a few big names who are also Apple shareholders like CalPERs, ISS, and Glass Lewis have all come out in support of Apples proposed change. Now, as the shareholder meeting looms large, Einhorn took to the phones speaking to investors and the media about why his ideas are better.

"It's not complicated, it's simple," Einhorn said of his idea on a call with the media earlier this afternoon. In essence, he views the change as a means of killing off preferred stock or at least making it significantly more difficult to issue. Instead, he wants Apple to distribute perpetual preferred shares to Apple shareholders for free. In the presentation he cited IBM and Texas Instruments as examples of companies that are friendly to shareholders and reiterated his claim that the proposed proxy wo......................

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