Alcoa Inc. appointed Ulrich Schmidt, John C. Plant and Sean O. Mahoney to serve on the company’s board of directors.
These appointments will further strengthen the company as Alcoa prepares to separate into two independent companies in the second half of 2016. With these appointments, the Alcoa board will be expanded to consist of 15 directors.
Alcoa and affiliates of Elliott Management, which hold an economic interest in approximately 7.5 percent of Alcoa’s common stock, have entered into an agreement that provides that Elliott will support the company’s slate of nominees. Mahoney will be included with the company’s slate of director nominees for election at the company’s 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders and will be added to the class of directors whose term expires in 2016. Schmidt and Plant will be added to the class of directors whose terms expire in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Alcoa plans to separate into two, publicly traded companies in the second half of 2016. The upstream company will comprise five strong business units that today make up global primary products: bauxite, alumina, aluminum, cast products and energy; the innovation and technology-driven value-add company will include the global rolled products, engineered products and solutions, and transportation and construction solutions businesses.
Ulrich “Rick” Schmidt is the former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Spirit Aerosystems Holdings, Inc. He served on the board of directors of Precision Castparts Corporation from 2007 until January 2016. Schmidt joined Spirit Aerosystems from Goodrich Corporation in 2005, where he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer from 2000 to 2005.
Plant is the former chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of TRW Automotive, which was acquired by ZF Friedrichshafen AG in May 2015. Under his leadership, TRW employed more than 65,000 people in approximately 190 major facilities around the world and was ranked among the top 10 automotive suppliers globally. Plant was a co-member of the chief executive office of TRW Inc. from 2001 to 2003 and an executive vice president of TRW from the company’s 1999 acquisition of Lucas Varity to 2003.
Mahoney has extensive experience in capital markets and business strategy across a variety of companies and sectors, including industrial and automotive. He is a private investor with over two decades of experience in investment banking and finance. Mahoney currently serves on the boards of Delphi Automotive plc, Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc., and Formula One Holdings, as well as the post-bankruptcy board of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Published in the March 2016 Edition of American Recycler News