Shareholder Activists at Friendly Ice Cream (A) Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Two activist investors, a founder and co-manager hedge fund, seek to improve the supervisory board of the company, a chain of restaurants. Prestley Blake founded Friendly Ice Cream in 1935 with his brother, and the two have created a chain of full-service restaurants. In 1979 they sold the business and retired. In 2000, Blake became concerned that the Director General of animals, who owned about 10% of the animals, as well as belonging to a larger percentage of other restaurant companies, was to shift costs between enterprises thus the damage to shareholders animals, but personally profitable CEO. In addition, Blake believed that the board of directors was not allowed to fulfill their fiduciary obligations to shareholders, properly supervise the activities of the Director General, and that the directors had conflicts of interest because they have been associated with an unfriendly CEO business. In 2003, Blake filed suit against the CEO and the company. In 2006, Sardar Biglari, hedge fund manager who invested in Friendly, entered into negotiations with the animals for him to join the board of directors to help improve the management of the business. When those negotiations failed, Biglari launched a proxy fight to animals in 2007. While these two activist investors similar goals, they worked independently of each other and have chosen different strategies. "Hide
by Fabrizio Ferri, VG Narayanan, James Weber Source: Harvard Business School 29 pages. Publication Date: April 4, 2008. Prod. #: 108024-PDF-ENG

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