all about. He previously worked in administrative jobs in the past three Republican presidential campaigns for President. Loncar says he honed his interest in finance during a stint at Franklin Templeton Investments. Now he says he makes his living managing his family’s investment portfolio from his home.
Loncar says he has an emotional, not just financial, interest in what Dendreon does. His grandfather died of prostate cancer in 2006, he says. Loncar followed the company for almost 10 years, and has been a shareholder the past three years, he says. At one point, he owned “many thousands” of shares in Dendreon, but grew frustrated with management over time, and sold all of his shares but one.
“If I had faith in the management of the company, trust me, I’d own many thousands of shares now as I have in the past,” Loncar says. “I became disillusioned about six months ago. Rather than walk away, I wanted to try to fix this.”
Loncar tried to bring up his concerns in what he calls a “pretty amicable” letter to Dendreon chairman Richard Brewer on February 22. He was concerned that the board may not be fully aware of all the missteps of management that he has perceived from following the company closely. “If I had received a call a week later, and they said thank you, I probably would have been happy and it would have ended,” Loncar says.
But three weeks went by after that letter was sent, and Loncar heard nothing. So Loncar wrote another letter, dated March 14th, in which he said he was “surprised and disappointed” to have been blown off. Loncar told Brewer, the Dendreon chairman, that he was a “big supporter” of the company, but that ignoring his proposals meant that he had “no choice but to reach out to other shareholders.”
“That definitely lit a fire,” Loncar says.
Within two hours of sending that letter, Dendreon’s corporate secretary who manages communications with the board, Rick Hamm, told Loncar that Brewer had said that his letters could be distributed to the entire board. So Loncar decided to wait a while longer to see if he got any response.
“I figured I’d let a week pass by. I gave it more than that, and still didn’t hear anything. It became pretty clear they were ignoring the proposal,” Loncar says.
So Loncar did what he promised—he reached out to other shareholders. He found public lists of the top 12 mutual funds and hedge funds with holdings
