Rite Aid (RAD, $1.28) Wants A Board Reshuffle

Rite Aid wants to rejig its board, after two failed merger plans.

The  drugstore chain said Thursday that three new, independent directors will be nominated to its board and that CEO John Standley will no longer hold the title of chairman. Next month, shareholders will vote on whether to approve board nominees Robert Knowling Jr., Louis Miramontes and Arun Nayar – who, if elected, would replace current directors David Jessick, Myrtle Potter and Frank Savage. The shakedown of management comes close on the heels of failure of two buyout attempts - by the grocer Albertsons and pharmacy chain Walgreens respectively.

Walgreens, however, did buy nearly 2,000 stores from Rite Aid Corp. Following the sale of its stores, Rite Aid now has about 2,500 locations mostly on the East and West coasts, and a pharmacy benefit management business.

On Thursday, Rite Aid announced that its fiscal second-quarter earnings narrowly fell short of the consensus expectation on Wall Street.

Contributor

Sergey Savastiouk|Expert

Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D. has a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow University and has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, investor, manager, and mathematician. His professional expertise is in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, system and pattern analysis, and software and hardware system integration. He has served as the CEO of several hi-tech start-up companies and nonprofit organizations, which has given him proven capabilities in business strategy for high-tech start-up companies, market assessment, company formation, team building, product development, marketing, and sales. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines on related fields. As a retail investor, he spent 15 years developing his proprietary trading and quantitative algorithms (now Tickeron’s A.I.), which brought him significant returns in trading the stock market. His current work and goal in founding Tickeron is to bring professional, sophisticated stock market analysis capabilities to retail investors via an easy-to-use interface.