Ahead of its next annual general meeting scheduled for later today, American casino operator Wynn Resorts Limited has reportedly announced that two of its directors have decided to resign following concerted pressure from its largest individual shareholder, Elaine Wynn (pictured).
According to a Monday report from the Bloomberg news service, Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts Limited revealed that John Hagenbuch will not be standing for re-election at today’s meeting before detailing that Robert Miller, a former two-term Nevada governor, had also decided to resign his place on its board of directors.
Via a late-April letter, 76-year-old Wynn had reportedly urged fellow shareholders to oust Idaho resident Hagenbuch from the board of Wynn Resorts Limited because she believed that his presence would hinder ongoing efforts to remake the image of the company. This rebranding purportedly became necessary in the wake of the early-February resignation of her former husband, Steve Wynn, as the firm’s Chief Executive Officer amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
Bloomberg earlier reported that Wynn, who owns 9.25% of Wynn Resorts Limited’s stock, had helped to establish the casino giant with her ex-husband and used last month’s letter to describe Hagenbuch as a ‘long-time close friend of Mr Wynn’ that still wielded ‘significant influence at the company’. She had moreover purportedly declared that the real estate magnate served on the company’s ‘special committee responsible for overseeing the investigation into allegations of Mr Wynn’s sexual harassment’ as well as on its ‘compensation committee’.
Hagenbuch’s position later reportedly became extremely untenable after New York-born Wynn won support from all three of the large proxy advisory firms while Wynn Resorts Limited subsequently declared that the latest departures mean that 60% of its board had now changed since February. It furthermore purportedly pointed to its appointment last month of a trio of new female independent directors in Margaret ‘Dee Dee’ Myers, Betsy Atkins and Winifred ‘Wendy’ Webb along with its decision to change the name of its under-construction Wynn Boston Harbor development in Massachusetts as examples of progress.
“I do not want my candidacy to detract from the important progress we have made throughout the organization including the ongoing refreshment process this board has initiated,” reportedly read a statement from Hagenbuch.