ValueVision Replaces CEO In Wake Of Proxy Battle
ValueVision Media, which operates under the ShopHQ brand, said Monday that it has appointed a new CEO—marking a victory for a dissident investor group that had pushed to replace the company’s chief executive.
The company also announced that five of the investor group’s board nominees have joined its board of directors.
Eden Prairie-based ValueVision has been engaged in a public back-and-forth with Clinton Group, a New York-based investment group, for months. ValueVision sells everything from jewelry to consumer electronics to beauty treatments on its website and television channel. Clinton has accused ValueVision’s leaders of mismanagement, an accusation that the company, which lost $2.5 million in its most recent fiscal year, has denied.
Shortly after the company held its annual meeting on Wednesday, the Clinton Group, citing a preliminary tally of votes, proclaimed that it had ousted half of ValueVision’s board. ValueVision declined to comment on the matter at the time, saying official results had yet to be released.
On Friday, the company disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission how many votes each nominee received, confirming that the Clinton Group’s nominees had received enough votes to take over half of the board. The Clinton-supported members that won the most votes were Thomas Beers, Mark Bozek, Robert Rosenblatt, and Fred Siegel. Incumbents John Buck, Landel Hobbs, and Lowell Robinson earned enough votes to retain their spots on the board, as did CEO Keith Stewart.
But the company announced Monday that Stewart has resigned from his roles as CEO and as a board director—which is something that the Clinton Group has been calling for. ValueVision said that Bozek has been named CEO and Rosenblatt was named non-executive chairman, effective immediately.
ValueVision said that Bozek has more than two decades of “senior executive experience in the multi-channel commerce, electronic retailing, and entertainment industries.” He has served as CEO of HSN, Inc., senior vice president of QVC, Inc., and as a producer at Fox Television.
While Wednesday’s vote left ValueVision’s board evenly split between incumbents and those nominated by the Clinton Group. ValueVision said Monday that Ronald Frasch—a former president of Saks Fifth Avenue and a nominee of the Clinton Group—has joined the board, filling the vacancy left by Stewart.
“I am thrilled to join the team at ShopHQ and humbled by the opportunity to work with a talented board and dedicated employees,” Bozek said in a statement. “ValueVision has great assets and our vision of all that comes next is ambitious; we plan to evolve the business, creating more robust platforms that enable us to become a far more relevant player in the multi-channel worlds of TV, online and mobile commerce and entertainment.”
Read more about each member of ValueVision’s reconstituted board here.