In addition to seating four new directors and capping the size of the board at 13, Carl Icahn is now agitating for Biogen to re-incorporate in the state of North Dakota.
The Icahn Group is seeking shareholder approval on its proposals to fix Biogen’s board size at 13 and move the company’s state of incorporation from Delaware to North Dakota. In 2007, the state passed into law a shareholders bill of rights that all newly incorporated companies must adopt. The law was pushed for by Icahn and others and makes it easier for shareholders to contest decisions made by a company’s management, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Icahn Group holds a 5.41 percent stake in the company and is seeking to seat Alexander Denner, a managing director of firms associated with Icahn; Richard Mulligan, a Harvard Medical School professor; Thomas Deuel, a professor at Scripps Research Institute, and David Sidransky, director of the head and neck cancer research division at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.