Annual meeting at Cardinal uneventful
Cardinal Health’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday was short and uneventful — a change from last year, when an investor group led by the Teamsters brought dozens of people to protest what they saw as the Dublin company’s role in the opioid crisis.
Cardinal is one of three dominant drug distributors in the U.S. that face hundreds of lawsuits from municipalities and states, alleging that they helped fuel the opioid crisis by not doing enough to stem the rising tide of addictive prescription painkillers. Drug makers face similar suits.
Two shareholder proposals failed to pass — one very narrowly — according to preliminary results provided by Cardinal.
Carin Zelenko, director of the Capital Strategies Department for the Teamsters out of Washington, D.C., presented both proposals at the meeting. The Teamsters were part of a group calling for Cardinal to tie executive compensation more directly to any potential fines or settlements related to the opioid crisis. That proposal attracted an 82 percent “no” vote.
A second proposal, which would have lowered the percentage of investors needed to call for a special meeting of shareholders from 25 percent to 10 percent, was very narrowly defeated. The unaudited vote tally was 49.4 percent in favor, 50.2 percent opposed. That proposal was introduced by Kenneth Steiner, an activist investor from New York whose father, William, is also a well-known activist investor.
All nine nominees for Cardinal’s board of directors were approved. One independent director, Akhil Johri of United Technologies, is new. Gregory Kenny, who retired as president of General Cable Corp., officially became Cardinal’s first independent chairman.
Mike Kaufmann, who took over as Cardinal CEO from George Barrett in January, gave a brief rundown of fiscal 2018 results and referred to first-quarter 2019 results that are scheduled to be released early Thursday morning.
Not present was former CEO George Barrett, who stepped down from his role as chairman as of Wednesday’s meeting. Early Wednesday, Target Corp. announced that Barrett had been appointed to the board of directors of the Minneapolis-based retailer.