Buxton Helmsley gets Mallinckrodt shareholder support to call meeting

By Sarah Lizee

Olympia, Wash., Jan. 27 – Buxton Helmsley Group, Inc. said it has received enough shareholder support to call a Mallinckrodt plc meeting of shareholders, start realigning the board and management with shareholder interests and negotiate the restructuring plan.

“Having gathered more than enough support from this broadly aggrieved shareholder base to call an extraordinary general meeting under section 178 of the Companies Act of 2014, we are now working through final discussions with institutional equity holders to garner our final support,” Alexander Parker, senior managing director of Buxton Helmsley, said in a Wednesday press release.

“After those final discussions, we will serve the company with an immediate requisition of that extraordinary general meeting.

“With any pushback from management or the board, we will immediately begin turning over startling communications, documents and information which we have received from not only shareholders, but also Mallinckrodt employees which have contacted our firm, to the press and securities regulators.”

As previously reported, the investment adviser, which said its clients have “significant and increasing” holdings of Mallinckrodt, claims the company is attempting to push through a Chapter 11 restructuring plan that will “extinguish all shareholder interests, unnecessarily turn all shareholder equity over to a handful of bondholders, and enrich management with a 10% allocation of the reorganized company when they currently own less than 0.03% of the existing company.”

The firm is calling to remove all directors and officers not in compliance with corporate governance requirements and is proposing the appointment of new company and board management, including chairman of the board, chief executive officer and chief financial officer. The firm said these may be interim positions until a more long-term plan can be formulated.

“We've made numerous attempts to contact company management and the board of directors, requesting that the company make immediate and significant board and management changes due to management's refusal to respond to shareholder inquiries, including offerings of financing opportunities by shareholders whom I personally know,” Parker said in the first release.

Parker also said the company admitted at the Dec. 16 equity committee appointment hearing that it had not attempted numerous paths to preserve shareholder equity and there has been no attempt by the board to sell the company.

“Management has made it very clear that they chose the restructuring plans that enrich themselves with a 10% allocation of the post-reorganization entity, and not only started the negotiations for shareholders at zero but admitted to being on the side of creditors from the get-go,” Parker said.

“They claim the company is insolvent without having proved it in any way, shape, or form. It is very clear the shareholders are no longer being represented; that is a mere fact the company told the shareholders at that hearing.”

Dublin-based Mallinckrodt develops, manufactures, markets and distributes specialty pharmaceutical products and therapies. The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Oct. 12 under case number 20-12522.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.