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Move to alter control slowed by stock's rise
By Bill Koenig
Bloomberg News
Published on Thursday, May 08, 2008
Ford Motor Co.'s stock price rally, apparently spurred by Chief Executive Alan Mulally's recovery plan, could quiet critics demanding the founding family relinquish control of the second-largest U.S. automaker.
Shareholders at today's annual meeting in Wilmington, Del., will vote for the fourth consecutive year on a proposal to end a dual-class stock structure that gives the Ford family 40 percent voting rights through its 3.2 percent ownership. The proposal drew 27 percent of shareholder votes in 2007, the most ever, after the company posted a record $12.6 billion loss for 2006.
Its author, activist investor John Chevedden, estimates 45 percent of non-family investors voted in support.
What's different this year is that Ford stock is up more than 20 percent as investors, including billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, demonstrate confidence in Mulally, chosen by chairman and former Chief Executive William Clay Ford Jr. to run the company in September 2006.
''People will cut the company some slack,'' said James O'Shaughnessy Chief Executive of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management LLC in Stamford, Conn. ''The odds are in favor of it coming back.'' His firm manages $9.5 billion in assets, including 1.4 million Ford shares.
Kerkorian's disclosure last week that he bought a 4.7 percent stake in Ford came after a March 31 regulatory filing showing that Dodge & Cox Inc., a San Francisco-based fund manager, acquired 4.9 percent, and a Dec. 31 disclosure that Boston-based Putnam Investments LLC almost doubled its holdings to a 1.2 percent stake, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.
''No one knows for sure, but we think there is very serious money to be made here,'' Jerome York, a Kerkorian adviser, said in a Bloomberg Television interview April 28. ''In the last couple of quarters but particularly the first quarter of this year, they really started moving the needle on results.
''It's pretty obvious, I think, he's a tremendous leader,'' York said of Mulally. In a separate interview with the New York Times published April 29, York said Ford ''has the best poison pill in the world against a hostile shareholder, and it's called 40 percent voting rights by the Ford family.''
York's backing hasn't deterred Chevedden, the 62-year-old shareholder.
''I would hope institutions are more savvy and give their support,'' he said. ''Kirk Kerkorian's hand would be stronger if Ford adopted this proposal.''
Dodge & Cox doesn't discuss individual holdings, spokesman Steve Gorski said in an interview. Neither does Putnam, spokeswoman Nancy Fisher said in an e-mail.
Mulally has cut 46,300 jobs at Ford's North American operations, the primary source of the company's losses. He has closed, or scheduled to close, nine plants, with one shut facility set to reopen.
Mulally is matching Ford's manufacturing capacity to its reduced share of the U.S. auto market.
The company had 16.2 percent of the U.S. market the first four months of this year, down from 25.7 percent in 1995, the last year it gained market share.
Ford Motor Co.'s stock price rally, apparently spurred by Chief Executive Alan Mulally's recovery plan, could quiet critics demanding the founding family relinquish control of the second-largest U.S. automaker.
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