A top executive at Ahold wants to get activist shareholders to sign agreements to force them to hold a stake in the Dutch retailer for up to three years before they can influence company strategy.
Ahold executive vice president Peter Wakkie told the Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad that hedge funds and other activist shareholders should sign deals tying them to a stake in the company for 1-3 years.
If such investors do not sign those agreements, then they cannot expect the board to change its strategy, Wakkie said.
“At the moment, the consequences only affect a company, which is reorganised, sometimes with large job cuts, and as soon as the share price has risen, the hedge funds are gone,” Wakkie was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
However, an Ahold spokesperson told just-food today (19 June) that it would be unlikely that the company would follow this path.

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By GlobalData“This is not something Ahold will be announcing,” the spokesperson said. “We don’t have any further comments to make on it.”