Bill Ackman accused Target of being an “insular” company with a board of cronies that treated him like an “evil outsider” when he floated ideas to boost the retailer’s stock price.
The gadfly investor — who launched a proxy battle after Target pooh-poohed his proposal to spin off the discount chain’s real estate — is looking to install five new candidates on Target’s board, including himself, at the retailer’s annual meeting May 28.
Portraying himself as “the underdog” in the fight, Ackman referred to Target’s board as a stagnating “friend of Bob,” with change-resistant members handpicked long ago by retired chairman Bob Ulrich.
As he introduced his own slate to Target investors at a Midtown auditorium yesterday, Ackman took pains to insist that his own nominees — with backgrounds in groceries, credit cards and corporate governance, in addition to real estate — weren’t merely stooges assembled to further his own agenda.
“I just want independent, fresh perspective on the board,” Ackman said.
A Target spokesman yesterday repeated the company’s concerns about what it called Ackman’s “risky real-estate agenda.” However, critics note that Ackman successfully prodded Target in 2007 to sell nearly half its credit-card portfolio — a move that, despite management’s initial reluctance, proved to be shrewd in hindsight.
“I’m not Carl Icahn,” Ackman said, taking a dig at the billionaire corporate raider. “I’m a very constructive, supportive investor in good and bad times.”
Ackman’s soft-pedaling stood in sharp contrast to an October event, in which he clicked through a meticulous, 150-page presentation that outlined the purported tax benefits and stock boost that his real-estate idea would create.
Still, some members of Ackman’s slate sounded firmly in line with his take on the issues.
Target “must have a point” in opting to own its real estate rather than lease it, but “I don’t know what that is,” said nominee Michael Ashner, CEO of Winthrop Realty Trust.