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Viacom investor SpringOwl urges independent directors to quit

February 10, 2016 at 03:50 pm EST

(Reuters) - Viacom Inc investor SpringOwl Asset Management urged the media company's six independent directors to step down immediately, days after the board appointed Chief Executive Philippe Dauman to the additional post of executive chairman.

Viacom's shares were down 3.7 percent in afternoon trading on Wednesday. They fell 21.5 percent on Tuesday, after the company reported revenue below Wall Street estimates for the fifth straight quarter.

SpringOwl, which has been agitating for change at Viacom, said the 11-member board was representing Dauman's wishes, not those of shareholders.

SpringOwl questioned how "independent" the six independent directors really are.

Three have no media or digital experience, the investor said, while two can't be considered independent as they have been on the board for decades.

Dauman, who railed against "naysayers" in Viacom's post-earnings conference call on Tuesday, replaced ailing 92-year-old Sumner Redstone as executive chairman last week.

Only Redstone's daughter Shari Redstone, non-executive vice chair of the board, voted against Dauman's appointment, which was also greeted by skepticism by some investors.

SpringOwl, which had previously described the board as "too large, too cozy, and too overpaid", urged Shari Redstone to chair a board committee to appoint new independent directors.

Sumner Redstone, who controls about 80 percent of the voting shares in Viacom, voted in favor of Dauman's appointment, according to a source close to the company.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Stocks mentioned in the article

	Add to a list Add to a list 0 selected To use this feature you must be a member Log in Sign up	Price	Change	5d. change	Capi.
	PARAMOUNT GLOBAL	10.97 USD	+1.48%	-2.66%	7.59B
	VIACOM INC.	- USD	-.--%	+0.37%	9.86B

Sumner Redstone

Sumner Murray Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein; May 27, 1923) is an American businessman and is a media magnate. He is the majority owner and Chairman of the Board of the National Amusements theater chain. Through National Amusements, Sumner Redstone and his family are majority owners of CBS Corporation and Viacom (itself the parent company of MTV Networks, BET, and the film studio Paramount Pictures), and are equal partners in MovieTickets.com. According to Forbes as of March 2014 he is worth US $6.2 billion. in Boston, Massachusetts, to Belle (née Ostrovsky) and Michael Rothstein. In 1940, his father changed the family surname from "Rothstein" to "Redstone" Michael Rothstein owned Northeast Theater Corporation in Dedham, Massachusetts—the forerunner of National Amusements—and the Boston branch of the Latin Quarter Nightclub. where he completed the studies for his baccalaureate in three years. Later, Redstone served as First Lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II After this military service, he worked in Washington, D.C., and attended Georgetown University Law School. He transferred to Harvard Law School and received his LL.B. in 1947.). He invested in Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Orion Pictures, and Paramount Pictures (Redstone's Viacom would buy Paramount in the 1990s), all of which turned over huge profits when he chose to sell their stock in the early 1980s.

In 1979, he suffered severe burns in a fire at the Copley Plaza hotel, in Boston, but survived after thirty hours extensive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Though he was warned that he might never be able to live a normal life, eight years later he was fit enough to insist on playing tennis nearly every day and to launch a hostile takeover of Viacom.

Career

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