Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) money manager Hassan Elmasry mounted a proxy fight against the election of The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) board. He got support from other large shareholders including T Rowe Price and Legg Mason. He was able to get 54% of the common shareholders to withhold their votes for the board.
And, Elmasry ending up looking like a fool to his bosses, the media, and Wall Street.
Morgan's share of NYT stock is about 7%. That would value it around $225 million. Given Morgan's size, and the amount of money that it runs, the holdings are not even a modest part of the pool that the investment bank oversees. Its fees on running that piece of the portfolio would be $4 million, if MS made 2%. And, it probably gets much less than that.
The time and effort that Morgan Stanley portfolio management put into the skirmish with the Times certainly cost more than $2 million in manpower and attorney's fees.
And, for what? Nothing.
Because The New York Times has two tiers of stock. the founding Sulzberger-Ochs family controls 70% of the seats on the company's board. The company may be badly run, but, as the company's chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. said, investors knew about the two classes of stock when they bought their shares. In other words, take a hike if you don't like how the company is run.
Never bet against the house. You just look like a boob.
Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.
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