SiliconBeat

For a third time, Actel has extended the deadline for nominees to its board of directors at the request of Ramius, a relatively new major shareholder with a lot of ideas about how Actel should go about increasing stockholder value.

Nominations must now be submitted by the close of business Friday, March 6. The previously extended deadline had been set for last Friday, Feb. 27, but that day came and went with no filing made by either Actel or Ramius as to whom the investor would nominate.

Ramius is busy frying other fish, it seems, involved as it is in a proxy battle with the board of directors at Orthofix International, the Dutch Antilles orthopedic medical device company. The investor hopes to elect four of its own directors to the company’s board at its April 7 shareholder meeting.

That struggle is the topic of an article in the Feb. 24 issue of Orthopedics This Week titled “Pirates of Ramius Unplugged” by Walter Eisner.

“Ramius charges that the Orthofix Board made a big mistake when it paid $333 million for Blackstone Medical in 2006,” writes Eisner. “In a nutshell, Ramius thinks the Orthofix Board ignored critical risk factors and failed to put in place a viable operating plan.”

In his Q&A with Ramius Partner Jeff Smith and  Managing Director Peter Feld, Eisner asks why Ramius bought shares of Orthofix after it acquired Blackstone Medical if they thought the acquisition was a bad idea.

“We bought the shares because we thought that there would be a lot of value created if they were able to sell off or improve Blackstone,” Smith told the magazine. “We did not buy the shares right after they bought Blackstone. We bought the shares when the stock was under $15 a share, so we thought that the opportunity to fix the problem far outweighed the fact that there was a mistake made. That does not mean that there was not a mistake.  We do not think the Board did enough work, or that the analysis surrounding the decision to buy Blackstone was as sound as it should have been.”