by Joseph Gresser
DANBURY, Connecticut — The management of Ethan Allen Interiors, which avoided being ousted by an “activist investor” 11 years ago, is again under the gun. Ethan Allen is an important element of the Kingdom’s economy. It operates a furniture plant in Orleans and a sawmill in Beecher Falls.
Doug Bergeron, whose business, DBG Investments Inc., is headquartered in Indonesia, released a letter on August 5, saying he owns a 5 percent share of the furniture company, and is nominating a slate of six board members to be voted on at the company’s annual meeting in November.
In 2015, Thomas Sandell, the head of Sandell Asset Management, launched a similar challenge to company management. At the time, he proposed to sell all of the company’s real estate and rent it back. That proposal, had it been adopted, would have provided large amounts of cash for investors, but left the company in serious debt.
As it turned out, a large majority of the company’s shareholders rejected Mr. Sandell’s takeover bid.
Mr. Bergeron, in his letter, provides not concrete information about specific changes he would make, but argues the company, which has been headed for the past 38 years by Farooq Kathwari, has grown stale and should be modernizing to increase profits.
In his letter, Mr. Bergeron ….
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