Huntsman Corporation HUN
The three reasons
- 1
Huntsman underperformed the S&P 500 by 337% from IPO to Starboard's involvement
- 2
Board failed three Investor Day promises in a row (2014, 2016, 2018) without accountability
- 3
Board is insular with personal/financial ties to CEO Peter Huntsman, including >$750M Huntsman-family donations to a director's employer
Primary demands
- Elect Starboard's slate of four independent director nominees at the 2022 Annual Meeting
- Vote the BLUE proxy card
- Replace incumbent directors with conflicts/personal ties to CEO Peter Huntsman (Beckerle, Ferrari, Egan, Muñoz)
- Instill accountability and demand operational excellence to close the EBITDA-margin gap to peers
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (7)
Notes
DEFAN14A proxy-fight letter to Huntsman stockholders accompanying Starboard's full 'Transforming Huntsman Corporation' deck (referenced but not included). Strong SCQA: situation (long underperformance), complication (board beholden to CEO), question (will it ever change?), answer (vote BLUE for our 4 nominees). Two especially memorable visual devices: (1) the 'Personal Friendships and Loyalties Among Huntsman Board Members' web diagram on p.7, and (2) the 'Fooled Shareholders ONCE / TWICE / THREE TIMES' broken-promises summary on p.13 capped with the 'definition of insanity' line. Uses peer-CEO 2021 earnings quotes (Celanese, Eastman, Dow) as a reverse contradiction – not the target CEO contradicting himself, but peers proving the target's 'best year ever' was just a rising tide. Layout is dense paragraph + chart hybrid (more letter than slide), but charts are institutional-quality.