


Gloves Come Off in Brookdale’s Proxy Fight
The proxy cards are in the mail to Brookdale Senior Living’s shareholders for the vote at the annual meeting, to be held on October 29, and it looks like CEO Cindy Baier has taken the gloves off. Brookdale has been fighting shareholder Land & Buildings’ nominee for a board position, Jay Flaherty, for many weeks. But now they are bringing up some of Mr. Flaherty’s past transgressions which, according to Brookdale, make “him unfit to serve as a member of Brookdale’s Board.” These transgressions include some foul play in 2011 when he was CEO of HCP, Inc., which resulted in a $101.7 million judgment against HCP, for which the court stated that HCP engaged in “fraudulent conduct with the... Read More »
The Great Development Slowdown
Everyone is talking about development slowing down, but over development is just part of the problem. We have been hearing it for a few months: seniors housing development is slowing down, based on fewer new construction starts. We have heard it from NIC MAP, from HCVenTower, and now Brookdale Senior Living. They are all saying that in many of their markets, they are seeing light at the end of the over-development tunnel. Maybe. It is one thing if new starts are declining, but it is quite another to fill the current empty units plus the new supply that is currently opening, and going to open. Let’s just say, we are not out of the woods yet, and census is only one part of the problem. Not... Read More »
Brookdale Activists Strike Again
We disclosed last week that activist investor Land & Buildings (L&B) had nominated Jay Flaherty, former CEO of HCP, Inc., and Jonathan Litt (founder of L&B) for board election at the 2019 annual meeting of Brookdale Senior Living. L&B has just sent an open letter to Brookdale shareholders providing more rationale for the election of these two candidates. Apparently, L&B hired Green Street Advisors to value Brookdale and its real estate assets, and to provide an opinion as to the feasibility of a PropCo/OpCo split of the company, something Litt has been pushing for quite a while now to enhance shareholder value. Not surprisingly, preliminarily they determined that... Read More »