Lifeway Foods again in sights of CEO’s disgruntled brother

Edward Smolyansky, a shareholder successful US-based kefir shaper Lifeway Foods, is seeking a practice connected the company's committee arsenic helium presses for a reshuffle.

Smolyansky, the member of Lifeway Foods' CEO Julie Smolyansky, has filed a proxy connection with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nominating himself and George Sent arsenic manager candidates up of the yearly wide gathering successful December.

"The filing continues the effort toward broad committee alteration to yet extremity the long-running governance failures, worth destruction, and entrenched enactment practices that person plagued the institution astatine the disbursal of its shareholders," it read.

"The enactment seeks to regenerate those bequest directors astir liable for the anterior board's deficiency of accountability and deference to management, thereby paving a wide way for a caller autarkic committee toward semipermanent worth instauration for the company."

In the SEC document, Mr. Smolyansky is besides urging, via a "non-binding" shareholder proposal, to found a peculiar committee consisting solely of autarkic directors appointed oregon elected aft 30 September.

The committee would measure Lifeway’s enforcement leadership, “strategic” program and alternatives, the filing read.

Smolyansky said the company, which was portion of a takeover connection from French dairy elephantine Danone, has failed to disclose completion of its earlier committedness to adhd 2 caller autarkic directors and has not acceptable a definitive day for the 2025 yearly meeting.

He called the upcoming December gathering a “pivotal” infinitesimal for the company’s “long-term” viability.

"Lifeway's shareholders merit an independent, transparent and accountable committee of directors," Mr. Smolyansky said.

"The signifier of governance failures outlined successful our preliminary proxy statement, including the mishandling of the Danone proposal, insider-driven decisions and entrenchment tactics, has damaged shareholder worth and destabilised the company. Our nominees bring independence, experience, integrity and the organization cognition required to reconstruct assurance and usher Lifeway forward."

Shareholders volition person the definitive proxy materials erstwhile available.

The proxy combat follows Smolyansky’s caller disapproval of Lifeway’s determination to widen its shareholder rights program for 1 twelvemonth to 29 October 2026.

Mr. Smolyansky described the hold arsenic a “shield for management” and the “most brazen illustration of committee and absorption entrenchment”.

At the time, helium added: “Julie Smolyansky and the existent committee look truthful paranoid astir losing adjacent de-facto power that they’ve efficaciously moved to artifact anyone – Danone oregon immoderate different capitalist – from accumulating a meaningful stake.”