The former chairman, director and the largest shareholder in Post, Williams is asking stockholders at their annual meeting May 27 to vote on his plan that would have shareholders--and not directors--decide what the company pays its board members.
Williams also is preparing to launch a website to pitch his platform to shareholders. He couldn't be reached by GlobeSt.com's publication deadline. But his publicist, Larry Dennedy of New York-based McKenzie Partners who helped Williams in his unsuccessful proxy fight last year, tells GlobeSt.com his client "can't project the results" of the May 27 meeting but believes shareholders will back his idea.
"He feels very strongly that shareholders should have the right" to decide the compensation packages of the company's directors, Dennedy tells GlobeSt.com.
The trigger that sparked the newest tiff was the $450,000 salary of Post chairman Robert C. Goddard III, associates of Williams and persons familiar with the latest controversy tell GlobeSt.com. Robert Anderson, a director, approved the $450,000 figure.
Anderson, a former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, leaves the Post board in May. He voted against Williams' takeover attempt last year. Insiders tell GlobeSt.com, it was Williams who initially appointed Anderson as a company director.
Post officials deny Goddard is overpaid. "The compensation is in the mainstream," Post president and CEO David P. Stockert tells GlobeSt.com. The $450,000 amount is "primarily a mix of cash and incentive bonuses," Stockert says. "Any company needs such a program to attract the right mix" of personnel and independent directors.
Williams' latest proposal "isn't in our shareholders' best interests," Stockert tells GlobeSt.com. He says that without the right compensation program, Post would never have attracted such "outstanding" national business leaders as Douglas Crocker II and Walter M. Deriso Jr.
Both are expected to join the board as new directors at the May 27 meeting. Crocker is the former president and CEO of Chicago-based Equity Residential. Deriso is vice chairman of Synovus, a multi-billion-dollar diversified financial services company headquartered in Columbus, GA.
Williams, meanwhile, is back in the development business but won't be competing against Post's garden-style apartment product. He is orchestrating an alliance of five companies, run by former Post executives and staffed by a total workforce of 750 in separate offices at One Overton Park, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. The five companies are involved in apartment community management, redevelopments, condominium and rental townhome development, and landscaping.
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