(Bloomberg) — Dan Loeb’s Third Point said the chairman of its London-listed fund, Steve Bates, resigned after receiving “personal threats” from activist investors.
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Loeb, the billionaire hedge fund manager known for waging his own activist campaigns, said Bates’s departure is a “loss for all shareholders” of Third Point Investors Ltd. and that the “juvenile antics smack of desperation and inexperience,” according to a statement Thursday.
The closed-end fund has been fighting with Asset Value Investors and Staude Capital, which had been agitating for policy changes to address the fund’s wide trading discount to its assets. The fund invests in Loeb’s $20 billion flagship hedge fund.
AVI’s Tom Treanor described Bates’s resignation as “unfortunate” and that an “overwhelming majority” of shareholders independent of the fund manager supported the activists.
“We continue to believe this raises serious questions around governance at the company,” Treanor said in an emailed statement.
During a recent meeting, one of the activists told Bates that they would attack him in other business areas if he refused to accept their proposals, according to the Third Point statement.
Read more: Third Point Activist Rejects Hedge Fund’s Share-Switch Offer
“The behavior by these so-called ‘activists’ is a stain on institutional investors who attempt to engage constructively with boards and management teams,” Loeb said in the statement. “Being a successful activist requires moving on when shareholders reject your plans rather than resorting to underhanded tactics.”
(Updates with AVI comment starting in fourth paragraph.)
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