Many shareholders of real estate lender Ladder Capital are ready to see its chair of the board of directors go. He may not walk away so easily.
More than 52 percent of shareholders voted last week against reelecting Alan Fishman to his post, Crain’s reported. The disclosure of the vote during the annual meeting was made through a regulatory filing on Friday.
It’s not yet clear if Fishman will vacate his position. And he may not have to — only 15 percent of companies require directors to resign after these kinds of votes, according to MSCI. Fishman has been the non-executive chair of the company’s board since its founding in 2008, owning 1 percent of its shares.
Shareholders have several gripes with Fishman. For one, the company stock is trading at a price greater than 40 percent below its pre-pandemic value. The stock has been slowly rebounding since the Covid-induced doldrums; it is currently up 31.3 percent in the last five years; the stock was up 1 percent in the first few hours of trading on Tuesday morning.
Additionally, Fishman and a pair of fellow board members decided against starting annual votes on executive pay packages for chief executive officer Brian Harris, despite an 80 percent majority supporting such votes at last year’s stockholder meeting.
A proxy advisor criticized Harris’ $15 million pay package last year, claiming there were bonuses that were “effectively guaranteed.” Ladder defended its pay framework in a regulatory filing this spring.
Ladder has $1.3 billion in cash and equivalents on its books. The company employs 54 people and specializes in commercial real estate loans averaging $25 million.
Last month, the lender sued Banyan Street Capital’s Rudy Prio Tourzet, alleging he was the guarantor on a delinquent $38.5 million loan secured by an office building in Rockville, Maryland.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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