Nearly 300 Masimo Healthcare Engineering employees may leave the company if Politan Capital Management ousts founder and CEO Joe Kiani.
That’s according to one of the latest batch of proxy soliciting materials from the digital health pioneer’s management. The company is engaged in a bitter proxy fight with Politan ahead of the company’s July 25 shareholders meeting.
“The prospect of losing our founder and CEO threatens to derail the progress we have made and jeopardize the future of Masimo,” the engineers said in an open letter included in the SEC filing. Their numbers represented more than 7% of the 4,000-strong workforce that Masimo reported in its most recent annual report.
A handful of regional sales managers in Europe, Asia and Australia also said they might leave the company.
As previously reported on MassDevice, COO Bilal Muhsin said in a letter dated June 26 that he plans to resign if Quentin Koffey and Politan take control of the company.
“I strongly believe in Masimo’s current team, and I know we are on the right path and will succeed if we are given the opportunity,” Muhsin said.
Kiani’s board seat is on the line in the shareholders’ vote. Company management is also running Christopher Chavez — a 30-year medtech veteran who previously held CEO roles at Trivascular and Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc. (ANSI) — for an independent director slot. Politan is meanwhile running former Stryker CFO Bill Jellison and former Agilent Technologies SVP and Chief Technology Officer Darlene Solomon for the spots.
Politan is seeking Kiani’s ouster a year after it won a heated fight for two seats.
Under pressure from Politan, the maker of pulse oximeters, wearable health trackers, and other health monitoring devices has been looking at options to split off its consumer business, undoing a two-year-old $1 billion acquisition of Sound United and its high-end audio and home theater systems.
Masimo has more arguments for its side on protectmasimosfuture.com, while Politan is making its case at www.advancemasimo.com.
One of Politan’s latest presentations accuses Masimo management of coercing pro-Kiani letters from employees, while the proxy materials from Kiani’s team claim there were internal processes to prevent coercion.
Politan’s Koffey said in a June 26 letter to shareholders: “Fundamentally, what this upcoming vote is about is simple: fixing the prolonged and deliberate refusal by Masimo to permit independent oversight. However, in light of the Board’s unprecedented actions, this vote will also have broader reaching implications in establishing what conduct institutional shareholders will tolerate.”
