Facing pressure from activist investor Dan Loeb, Dow Chemical Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris told CNBC that Warren Buffett supports his vision.
Transcript:
we’ve taken about 50 cents already off. thepreferreds. i said when andrew interviewed me last week that warren and i, we are working on the best way to do those preferreds is let them earn themselves out. he’s now an equity investor. when he gets the upside when it gets to $53.70, they will disappear. actually, i was just with him this week. and he basically said to me, you know, andrew, keep doing what you’re doing. keep working on the strategy of the company. we’re an owner, and we like being an owner. and frankly, we think you’ve been running the company for the investors who will stay versus the investors who will leave. and frankly, keep doing that. what is your sense in terms of support from investors? putting warren buffett aside, right now what type of support do you think you have from the shareholders and perhaps more importantly from the board? the board and we have been working together hand in hand since ’06. this is a strong board. it’s one of the best boards in america. a marquee board. it’s been every board meeting. in this last 18 months as the world has gotten very uncertain. as new types of investors come into the stock, that are short-term warranted we’ve seen throughout the sector. we knew that somewhere along the line we would have an investor who had some ideas that were very different to ours. frankly, as i said earlier, the current investor that thinks about what we should do, those ideas are not all that misaligned. actually, we’re aligned that we’ve created value. it’s just the release of that value.
