PARIS – Activist investors continue to shake things up at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, with a number of board members resigning from the French mall operator on Friday.
During a supervisory board meeting held that day – which included three directors newly elected on Nov. 10: Xavier Niel, Léon Bressler and Susana Gallardo – Colin Dyer resigned as chairman of the company’s board. He had served as chairman since April 2017 and will remain a board member at URW.
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The board’s vice chairman Jacques Stern, along with Philippe Collombel, Sophie Stabile and Jacqueline Tammenoms Bakker, resigned as well.
Niel, who had been leading a consortium of URW shareholders, became a member of URW’s remuneration committee. Bressler, a former chief executive officer of Unibail, was named chairman, and Gallardo was appointed member of the governance and nomination committee.
On Nov. 9 the shareholder consortium landed board seats for Niel, Bressler and Gallardo, and later foiled company plans for a 3.5-billion-euro capital increase during a shareholder meeting held remotely.
URW’s plan, named “Reset,” has come under fire from the activist shareholders, who said a rights issue would be severely dilutive, and have called on the company to instead focus on its core European shopping centers and sell its U.S. holdings.
The mall operator has been hard-hit by lockdowns and disruptions to business from the coronavirus crisis.