Broadwood Partners, Staar Surgical Co.’s largest shareholder, says it’s making progress toward calling a special meeting to remove three of the company’s board directors.
Broadwood seeks to remove Elizabeth Yeu, Staar Chief Executive Stephen Farrell and Arthur Butcher, saying all three are most responsible for the company’s $1.5 billion sale to Alcon “at the wrong time, after a flawed process and at an adequate price.”
“We have been engaged in the byzantine process required by STAAR to call the Special Meeting to remove those directors who, in our view, are most responsible for orchestrating and perpetuating this misbegotten proposed transaction,” Broadwood founder and President Neal Bradsher said in a statement.
Staar views the announcement as “nothing more than an attempt to distract from the actions that the Board is taking to serve the best interests of stockholders.”Â
“It is disappointing that Broadwood is criticizing and threatening to unseat the STAAR directors who are taking the very step it has repeatedly demanded,” a company spokesperson for Staar told the Business Journal via email.
The shareholder vote that determines whether the Alcon merger goes through or not has been rescheduled to Dec. 19 following several postponements.
