Groupon Inc Hires Sears Lawyer As General Counsel

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Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) hired a top lawyer Dane Drobny from Sears Holdings Corp and added Ann Ziegler of CDW Corp to its board of directors, according to a press release from the company. Drobny would replace David Schellhase and start his tenure in the company next month. Drobny has been Sears’ general counsel since 2010.

Schellhase to remain adviser

Schellhase was among the Groupon’s senior management team that was appointed from large West Coast tech companies in 2011, when the company decides to go public. Schellhase served as a general counsel of Salesforce.com prior to joining Groupon three years ago. He will continue to act as an adviser for the daily deal selling company.

Ann Zeigler, the newly appointed board member served as the chief financial officer of Vernon Hills-based computer reseller CDW Corp. In Groupon, Ziegler replaced by Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments LLC, who gave up his position this year and decided not to go through re-election. Prior to CDW, Ziegler served as CFO at Sara Lee Food and Beverage.

Host of other top executives that departed from the company since past year are former Cisco Systems executive Brian “Skip” Schipper, head of human resources, who joined Twitter Inc.; and Jeff Holden, senior vice president of product management and a former Amazon.com executive, who left in March to join Uber.

Rising short interest for Groupon

In the month of June, short interest of Groupon increased totaling to 75,974,617 shares as of June 13th, a growth of 15.7% from the May 30th total of 65,654,495 shares. Out of total float, around 16.7% of the company’s share was shorted. The short-interest ratio is currently 4.7 days.

Groupon Director Theodore Leonsis unloaded 19,750 shares of the company’s stock on the open market in a transaction as on June 16th. Thodore sold the shares at an average price of $6.22 for a total value of $122,845.00, according to a disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Recently number of analysts gave their rating on the Groupon stock.  B.Riley analysts reduced the price target from $ 8.00 to $6.00 in a research note on May 9th. Deutsche Bank maintained Buy rating on the stock with a price target of $8.00 in a research note to investors on May 7th. Groupon presently has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $9.75.

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