Activist investor secures five Southwest board seats to give up proxy fight

As covered in the Journal and everywhere travel related, Southwest Airlines negotiated a settlement with Elliott Investment Management, ending a four-month standoff headed to a proxy fight. Elliott secured five board seats:

• Pierre Breber, former CFO of Chevron (Delta bought a refinery, which hedges fuel prices 40 to 50 percent across its network, as of April 2022).
• David Cush is ex-CEO of now defunct Virgin America, bought by JetBlue.
• Sarah Feinberg ran the Federal … Railroad Administration and served as interim president of the New York City transit authority, but the press release mislabels her as CEO, which went to Janno Lieber. Then, the New York State Senate yanked her chair by refusing to separate it from the CEO position.
• Dave Grissen is a former group president of Marriott International. Marriott, like its largest peers, is asset-light and heavily franchised, and scale feeds the distribution funnel that drives all the good metrics leading to higher franchise fees in percentage and real-dollar terms. Marriott installed Amadeus as its central reservation system in 2021; coincidentally, Southwest struggled with Amadeus as it moved from segment-based to O&D (origin and destination) management to address complexity as it installs extra-legroom seats and begins red-eyes.
• Gregg Saretsky, ex-CEO of Westjet, had such a toxic relationship with his workforce, he abruptly retired with no notice. “I think we're just looking forward to working with the new CEO, Ed Sims," ALPA's Robert McFadyen told the CBC at the time. Brian Summers, who writes the Airline Observer, has expressed surprise that Southwest could not rally its employees around management.
• Patricia Watson, ex-CIO and CTO at NCR Atleos, served as chief information and technology officer at NCR Atleos, a spinoff of National Cash Register focused on ATMs. She’s ex-Air Force and is married to a Southwest captain (both from the release).

Executive Chair Gary Kelly takes an early departure, while CEO Bob Jordan retains his role for now.

This agreement follows Elliott’s announcement in June of a $2 billion stake after Southwest’s shares fell sharply. With holiday season bookings strong, some analysts credit Elliott’s intervention for more decisive management action. Now, will the numbers hold?