Advisor: ODP should reject Levan nominees

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. The Institutional Shareholder Services, an institutional proxy advisory service, is recommending that Office Depot shareholders reject the director nominees of Alan Levan and his company Woodbridge at Office Depot's annual meeting on April 23, Office Depot reported. ISS cited concerns about the poor performance of Levan’s companies and the lack of qualifications of his nominees, and concluded that Levan and his nominees have not proven that they would be better able than Office Depot’s management to effect positive changes at Office Depot.

Among the concerns raised by ISS were that the publicly traded companies lead by Levan have produced significant negative stockholder returns for the past 1-, 2- and 3- years, Levan nominee Mark Begelman has not been in the office supplies business for more than 12 years and Martin Hanaka has had a track record of poor share price performance during his tenure at other public companies.

Additionally, ISS noted that some Office Depot stockholders have raised concerns that, despite the fact that Levan has not called for removing our current ceo or any other changes in management, Levan would try to “wrestle” for control of management, particularly given that he has targeted for removal from the Office Depot Board both the current and former ceos.