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FrontFour Fires Back With New Missive To Fisher Shareholders
May 3, 2011 at 3:38 PM (PT)
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The exchange of verbiage between FISHER COMMUNICATIONS and dissident shareholder FRONTFOUR CAPITAL GROUP/FRONTFOUR MASTER FUND, LTD. continues with a missive sent to shareholders by FRONTFOUR warning that "we cannot allow FISHER's current CEO and board to embark on another acquisition spree" and asserting that FRONTFOUR "has a dynamic plan to maximize the value of your investment." FRONTFOUR has nominated its own slate of nominees for FISHER's board of directors in a challenge to CEO COLLEEN BROWN and current management.
Charging that FISHER management "continues to mischaracterize the Company's performance" and trails its peers by over 2% from OCTOBER 2005 through DECEMBER 31st, 2010, FRONTFOUR insists that it "is not seeking control! Do the CEO and Board not have confidence in themselves? Given the cumulative voting regime for this election of directors it is not possible for FRONTFOUR to gain control of the Board and the Board knows it. Do not be fooled by any claim to the contrary. In order to have four candidates elected to the Board FRONTFOUR would need the support of over 80% of all votes cast. Does the Board truly believe that its performance is so bad that FRONTFOUR could receive 80% of the votes cast when to FRONTFOUR's knowledge no dissident has ever received such overwhelming support in recent memory?"
Saying that its plan is to have the Board carry out a strategic analysis of all other alternatives to maximize stockholder value including the current review of (the proposed sale of SEATTLE headquarters) FISHER PLAZA, FRONTFOUR proposed "a reduction of corporate costs, optimization of FISHER PLAZA, a focus on shared services among the operating stations, and streamlining and reducing costs within news production." Included in its proposals are reducing space used by the TV and radio stations in SEATTLE by 50% and/or moving to a smaller building, allowing the company to lease some of the space to third parties. It also asserted that there "are opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiencies in the news department, including by better automating production across stations."

