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The activist investor Carl Icahn has claimed two seats on Cloudera’s board of directors. A few weeks ago, Icahn bought an 18.4 percent stake in the company.

Icahn is best known for wanting to block Dell’s attempt to become a private company in 2013.

The billionaire announced his position within Cloudera earlier this month. He also stated that the company was undervalued. So now there is an agreement with which Icahn gets two seats on the board, writes Bloomberg.

New board members

Those chairs go to Nicholas Graziano and Jesse Lynn, both employees of the billionaire. Graziano is also given a place in a committee that deals with mergers and acquisitions. Lynn becomes a member of a committee that has to find a new CEO for Cloudera.

The previous CEO, Tom Reilly, was forced out of the company in June after it presented disappointing sales in the first quarter. The expectations for the next period were also lower than expected.

Since Icahn announced his shareholding in Cloudera, we have been working very hard on constructive discussions with Carl and his colleagues, according to interim CEO and chairman Martin Cole.

Based on the strength of our product portfolio, our impressive enterprise customer base and the potential of our new Cloudera Data Platform, Carl indicated that he thinks Cloudera is undervalued. And we agree.

Possible new position

Icahn has agreed to a so-called standstill agreement. As part of this, he has promised to limit his share in the company to 20 percent. The board of directors is now extended to ten directors. Possibly there will be an eleventh position when a new CEO has been appointed.

According to the agreement, Icahn will not nominate any other directors to the board of directors in 2020. He also supports the nominations of the company.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.