By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Activist investor Impactive Capital has selected a handful of director candidates with experience in banking and payments to serve on financial technology company WEX’s board, signaling its intent to push ahead with a planned proxy fight.
Impactive, which owns 6.4% of WEX, signed up four industry executives to serve on its slate, two people familiar with the matter said. Impactive co-founder Lauren Taylor Wolfe may also stand as a director candidate, taking the number of total candidates to five, said the sources, who are not permitted to discuss the private agreements publicly.
The selection of directors – long before the window to nominate candidates opens next year – underscores ongoing tension between the two sides. Impactive said in May, just two days after WEX’s annual meeting, that it intends to run a proxy fight. WEX is valued at roughly $5 billion and its shares have fallen 13% since January.
“We have a history of constructive engagement with Impactive and we welcome feedback from all our shareholders,” a WEX representative said.
This would be only the second time in Impactive’s eight-year history that the firm has nominated directors to a board. It settled its fight with financial technology company Envestnet in 2023 when the company added three directors to the board, including Taylor Wolfe.
For WEX, Impactive selected Ellen Alemany, vice chair of First Citizens Bank, Ken Cornick, co-founder of airport security company CLEAR, Jim Fox, former interim CEO and current board chair of Envestnet and fintech investor Kush Saxena who is a former CEO of Getnet and was a former chief strategy officer of Mastercard.
Taylor Wolfe is scheduled to speak at Tuesday’s 13D Monitor Active-Passive Investment Summit in New York where investors will present their best investment ideas and present updates to existing activist campaigns.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Nia Williams)
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