Another Activist Exposes a Weak Board with a Lousy CEO

It’s an odd phenomenon that, although capitalism as a philosophy is built around the meritocracy of free markets, in the area of corporate governance the power of profit maximization has often failed to dump ineffective boards of directors and/or management in favor of more competent people.

Boards are usually made up of invited friends, and sometimes their supervision of senior management resembles that of golf partners where it’s good manners to ignore others’ poor shots while offering congratulations on the good ones. The pressure to avoid rocking the boat is felt by everyone.

Hence the Economist this weekend noted an innovative solution to the issue of weak, sometimes unqualified board members. Why not outsource the function to companies whose business it is to provide such services? This currently happens with audit and legal work. Board members are hardly engaged full-time by any one corporation. Why not develop specialists who are truly independent and full-time?

It struck me as quite a clever suggestion. It ought not to be necessary, but the many failings we see week after week highlight that capitalism is often coming up woefully short in this important area of corporate governance, or how the very stewards of capital are managed and evaluated. Even Warren Buffett punted when a few months ago he was asked about the egregious compensation plan recommended by Coke’s (KO) management.

Although Berkshire (BRK) is KO’s biggest shareholder and Buffett about as vocal on investor rights as anybody, the great man meekly abstained rather than vote against a plan he freely admitted was needlessly generous.  “If you keep belching at the dinner table, you’ll be eating in the kitchen,” was his typically folksy and non-combative explanation. He understands as well as anybody the duty of board members to be only occasionally critical and then in the nicest possible way.

Other examples include ADT, which as I’ve written before is busy demonstrating the ham sandwich test (invest in a company that could be run by a ham sandwich, because one day it will), as shown by their buyback of Corvex’s position in ADT stock last year at $44 just before disappointing earnings took its price eventually below $30. Activists are often a force for good as they seek to expose management failings, but Keith Meister’s Corvex is a negative since he’ll readily throw other investors under the bus for a quick profit. We own ADT in spite of its leadership since we think anybody could run it as badly as current management and many could do better. It’s an option on executive suite change.

Currently the role of using capital to improve management is taken by activists such as Carl Icahn. He just provided a stark reminder of how shareholders often need activists to correct some of their self-seeking behavior. Family Dollar (FDO) just the other day agreed to sell itself to Dollar Tree (DLTR), an unlikely partnership since they operate different business models and would continue to do so afterwards.

FDO CEO Howard Levine noted that no discussions had taken place with the more obvious and bigger merger partner Dollar General (DG), to whose steadily improving operating metrics FDO eternally aspired but never reached. DG’s CEO Rick Dreiling flatly contradicted this by noting that DG had expressed interest in a combination multiple times in recent years. Carl Icahn backed this up, recounting a dinner with Levine at which the subject of a combination with DG was discussed. With DG, Howard Levine will lose his job to the superior operator, whereas with DLTR he’d keep it. As Icahn memorably noted, Levine thinks that because his father founded the company the son owns it. But he doesn’t. FDO’s stock has consistently underperformed DG’s in recent years as has its business. As close competitors it’s been helpful for investors as well as the companies themselves to compare their relative operating performance which has invariably favored the larger, better run DG (we are currently invested in DG, and were until very recently invested in FDO).

DLTR was a better merger partner for a CEO putting his own job ahead of his fiduciary obligation to his shareholders, and the FDO board passively acquiesced. Levine even agreed to a $300 million break-up fee in the DLTR transaction, a final slap in the face to those stockholders who thought he had their interests at heart.

Investors though should be far more assertive. If well-run boards with good corporate governance were more highly valued, they’d arrive more quickly. The more a poorly run company’s stock is shunned the quicker activists or competitors can buy a stake and fix it. The best solution to poor corporate governance is to invest with competent management and avoid the poorly run, at least until they’re cheap enough to draw in an activist. FDO had at least met this test in the last couple of years. Even institutional investors don’t have to own every publicly listed large cap company. Until investors become even more discriminating in their allocation of capital, activists will continue to correct perhaps the biggest weakness in contemporary capitalism – the management of the executive suite.