Stillwater’s board and management team have made a “series of strategic missteps and bad acquisitions,” New York-based Clinton Group said in a statement today. Stillwater should reassess plans for projects in Canada and Argentina, it said in a letter sent to the Stillwater board.
Stillwater has declined 41 percent in the past 24 months. The company, based in Billings, Montana, bought Peregrine Metals Ltd. last year for $262.9 million to add the Altar copper and gold project in Argentina and acquired Marathon PGM Corp. for C$134.7 million ($136.4 million) in 2010.
Mike Beckstead, a company spokesman, didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
“It is time for Mr. McAllister to retire and to be replaced by a proven executive with a commitment to operating the Montana mines efficiently and to ridding the company of its prospecting and speculative investments in Canada and Argentina,” Clinton Group Managing Director Gregory Taxin said in the letter to Stillwater’s board.
“In the absence of movement on these items, you should expect that we will take our case to Stillwater shareholders this spring,” Taxin said in the letter.
Clinton Group owned 0.5 percent of Stillwater as of Sept. 30, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
To contact the reporter on this story: Liezel Hill in Toronto at lhill30@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net