A boardroom is seen in an office building in Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S., May 24, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo
(Reuters) -Starboard Value on Wednesday nominated three directors including its chief executive and founder, Jeff Smith, to Autodesk's board, rekindling its proxy battle with the company over margin concerns.
The nominees include Geoff Ribar, former CFO of Cadence Design Systems, and Christie Simons, a senior partner at Deloitte & Touche.
Ribar also serves on the board of Acacia Research, a company backed by Starboard, while Simons joined memory chipmaker Micron's board earlier this month.
The hedge fund, which holds a $500 million stake in Autodesk, last week announced its intention to nominate a minority slate of director candidates for election at the 2025 annual meeting, nearly a year after a failed attempt to push its board candidates.
"Board change is necessary at Autodesk," Starboard said last week.
Starboard has argued that Autodesk spends significantly more than software peers and has underperformed the market.
Autodesk, which is valued at about $58 billion, has seen its shares fall more than 7% this year, marking a far deeper slump than the S&P 500's 1.8% drop.
Last year, Starboard urged Autodesk's board to explore a CEO change and cost cuts, after it lost a legal fight against the company to delay its annual meeting and re-open the window for director nomination when it failed to appoint its candidates due to missed deadlines.
Autodesk said earlier last week it had offered the hedge fund a chance to participate in the process of finding the new directors that were added in December 2024.
The company in December appointed two independent directors - former chairman and CEO of Kraft Foods John Cahill and Ram Krishnan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Emerson - to its board.
Autodesk currently has a 13-member board, with former Intel executive Stacy Smith serving as its non-executive chairman. He also serves on the boards of chipmakers Kioxia and Intel.
(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
