Biopharmaceutical company Minerva Neurosciences Inc (NasdaqGM:NERV) reported on Tuesday the exercise of warrants held by certain
institutional stockholders in connection with a private placement as well as completion of the purchase of common stock in the open market by the chairman of its board of directors.
Low profile US and European
institutional stockholders own the rest of the equity in the business.
The transaction, which includes a private placement of a minimum USD11m of Paulson common shares to certain
institutional stockholders of VBI and an additional investor, will see VBI's pre-merger shareholders acquiring a combined 59% voting stake in Paulson, the latter said.
The company repurchased 5,771,126 of such shares from two
institutional stockholders at a price of USD 20.
Nguyen is the only individual who owns 5 percent of the company's stock, though there are
institutional stockholders with that amount as well.
Glass Lewis & Co and RiskMetrics Group, Inc are firms that advise
institutional stockholders on how to vote their shares.
Given the dominance of
institutional stockholders in developed stock markets compared to their less developed counterpart, it is our conjecture that the differences in tail behaviors across these markets can possibly be attributed to differences in investment behavior of institutional versus individual investors.
The silence in turn is caused by the prevalence of conflicts of interest among
institutional stockholders.
Under the banner of "accountability,"
institutional stockholders and others have presented companies with an increasing number of stockholder proposals seeking to require majority approval of directors, rejecting the plurality vote standard that applies to most corporations.
Mr Whitworth said that he and representatives of four other
institutional stockholders, owners of about 16 per cent of Tyco's two billion shares, had lobbied new chief executive Ed Breen to replace the old regime's board members during a a meeting in New York on his first day in post.
The company has been negotiating for more than a year with some of its big
institutional stockholders and agreed to the change several weeks ago, spokesman John Dreyer said Thursday.
In 1992 and again in 1995, the board and management met with
institutional stockholders and then issued a statement of corporate-governance policies, which is reprinted in the proxy statement.
