The shakeout from last month’s proxy battle at Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis Co. is starting to show in the company’s boardroom.
The real estate investor and brokerage this month installed a new chairman, C. Michael Kojaian, a developer and investor who is Grubb’s largest shareholder.
It’s a return to the chairmanship for Kojaian, who held the seat before Grubb,then based in Chicago,was acquired in 2007 by Santa Ana-based NNN Realty Advisors Inc.
A spurned Tony Thompson, NNN’s founder and Grubb’s second-largest individual shareholder, said he expects to distance himself from the company following an unsuccessful attempt late last year to rejoin the board.
Also this month, Grubb gave interim Chief Executive Gary Hunt, a former Irvine Company executive, with a more lucrative contract as it continues its search for a full-time chief executive.
The moves come a few weeks after a trio of directors were re-elected during a proxy battle at the company, whose stock has slumped during the past year amid the downturn in commercial real estate.
Grubb counts a market value of about $70 million, down more than 80% from its 2008 peak.
Kojaian, a company director who owns more than 20% of Grubb’s stock, voted for the trio of existing directors. His support likely was the deciding factor in their re-election, according to company watchers.
His support for the trio paid off this month with his appointment as the company’s chairman. He succeeds Glen Carpenter, who remains on the board of Grubb as an independent director.
Carpenter also founded and serves as chief executive of Irvine-based FountainGlen Properties, a developer of senior housing that was acquired earlier this month by Clarett Group, a New York-based developer and landlord.
Thompson attempted to get himself, Stuart Tanz and Harold Ellis,Grubb’s cofounder and former chief executive,placed on the board. But he was rebuffed in the December shareholder vote.
Ellis, who had been battling cancer, died earlier this month at age 77. He took Grubb public in 1982, and started two other real estate businesses after leaving the company in 1992.
Another proxy battle from Thompson, who now heads up Irvine-based real estate investor Thompson National Properties, looks unlikely.
Thompson has been selling shares in the company, with his stake in the company decreasing about a percentage point to 13% in recent months, based on filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Thompson, who served as Grubb’s chairman for a brief time after the acquisition, remains a critic of the company’s direction.
He cited excessive costs and spending by Grubb’s board and management team as one reason for his proxy battle. Now he questions the recent raise for interim chief Hunt, the political adviser for Donald Bren’s Irvine Company in the 1990s.
Grubb this month disclosed an increase in the salary of Hunt, who also is a managing partner of consultant California Strategies LLC, from $50,000 to $100,000 a month.
The company’s been searching for a permanent chief executive since last July, when former chief executive Scott Peters resigned.
Hunt has said in the past he has no interest in taking over the position on a full-time basis.
Grubb said that the search process was impeded last quarter by the proxy contest. Thompson pushed for fellow slate candidate Tanz, the former chairman and chief executive of San Diego’s Pan Pacific Retail Properties Inc., to take over the chief executive role.
That suggestion was rebuffed by the company’s management.
The company said it remains “actively engaged” in its search for a permanent chief executive, but has not given a time frame for when it hopes to conclude the search.
