MEMC Announces Plan To Declassify Board Of Directors

MEMC Electronic Materials  announced that its board of directors has voted to include in the company's proxy statement for its 2013 annual meeting of stockholders a management proposal to eliminate the Company's classified board structure.   

The board will recommend that stockholders approve an amendment to the Company's certificate of incorporation to eliminate the classified structure.  If approved, directors would be elected to one-year terms as their existing terms expire, beginning with the class of directors elected at the Company's 2014 annual meeting of stockholders.  The full text of the proposal will be included in the Company's proxy statement to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the spring. 

"The classified board structure at MEMC has been in place since the Company's initial public offering in 1995.  While we believe our stockholders have benefited from having a classified board and continue to believe that there are good reasons to retain it, we accept that at the 2012 annual meeting, our stockholders approved a nonbinding shareholder proposal that the MEMC board take steps to declassify the board.  Our decision today is responsive to that recommendation," commented John Marren, chairman of the MEMC board of directors.