Elliman shareholders back embattled chairman Howard Lorber

Howard Lorber isn’t handing over the reins of Douglas Elliman just yet.

Shareholders at the firm’s annual investor meeting voted to renew the 75-year-old chairman’s seat on the board of directors and in favor of his compensation package, which included a multimillion-dollar bonus, according to a filing with the Securities and Exhchange Commission.

The votes were a show of support for Lorber, who has faced criticism in recent months as the company continued to lose money and its stock price fell as low as $1. Last month, investor Brad Tirpak issued a letter to fellow shareholders, urging them to oppose Lorber’s re-election to the board and to vote against his incentive award.

Tirpak’s campaign did appear to have some impact: Lorber was elected with 70 percent of the vote, while two other board members received 88 percent.

In his letter, Tirpak knocked Elliman for lowering the financial benchmarks last year for executives to receive bonuses, arguing that Lorber and other leaders wouldn’t have met the thresholds for adjusted EBITA or gross transaction value if they’d been evaluated by the 2022 standards.

“The board rewards [Lorber] for losing money,” Tirpak said. “Your boss fires you if you lose money — that’s what happens in the real world.”

The investor also raised concerns that Lorber received the full amount of the diversity, equity and inclusion portion of his bonus despite accusations that two of the firm’s former top brokers, Oren and Tal Alexander, raped and sexually assaulted women during their time at Elliman.

“Stockholders deserve to know how the assault and harassment claims were handled by management,” Tirpak wrote in the letter. Elliman has said it received no formal complaints about the Alexanders when they were at the firm.

A week before the meeting, advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended shareholders withhold votes on Lorber, whose contract was set to expire in December, although it is automatically renewed each year unless either side declines. 

The shareholder meeting came after Elliman reported a $1.7 million loss in the second quarter, which was its eighth consecutive quarter in the red. However, that was a significant improvement from the $42 million it lost in the first quarter, which included a $17.75 million agreement to settle antitrust lawsuits over broker commissions.

The firm’s stock closed Wednesday at $1.86, down from its one-month high of $2.24. Earlier this year, Elliman’s share price was dangerously close to dipping below $1, but a series of stock purchases by executives helped stabilize it. Lorber, chief operating officer Richard Lampen and two of the firm’s directors bought 640,000 shares in July.

Elliman’s former parent company Vector Group announced on Wednesday that it would be acquired by Japanese tobacco company JT Group in a $2.4 billion deal. Elliman spun off from Vector in 2021, though Lorber stayed on as Vector’s chief executive. The company owns and operates tobacco firm Liggett Group and real estate investment company New Valley. 

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