Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis has issued a statement claiming that it won a proxy fight with a former company chairman.
“It appears as though the Grubb & Ellis nominees were reelected,” said company spokeswoman Janice McDill.
The current board’s slate of nominees — Harold Greene, Devin Murphy and D. Fleet Wallace — were challeged by a slate led by Tony Thompson, the former board chairman and the company’s second-largest stockholder.
Thompson founded a commercial real estate investment firm, NNN Realty Advisors of Santa Ana, that merged last December with Grubb & Ellis. The new entity, which kept the Grubb & Ellis name, named Thompson as its chairman and moved the company headquarters from Chicago to Santa Ana.
Thompson resigned his chairmanship shortly after consummation of the merger that he engineered to seek new investment opportunities. Now he’s seeking to regain a board seat, complaining that the company is mismanaged. His slate includes Harold Ellis, co-founder of the original Grubb & Ellis.
McDill said preliminary results of a proxy vote completed at the firm’s annual meeting Wednesday in Washington, D.C., will be released sometime next week. The final, official tally is weeks away.
But based on the number of proxy cards presented by both sides Wednesday, it appeared that the company slate had won, she said.
Thompson was not immediately available for comment.
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