The controlling shareholder of financial publisher Value Line Inc., former CEO Jean Bernhard Buttner of Westport, is making a grab for about half of her company’s remaining cash, Crain’s New York Business reported today.
It said the publisher of the Value Line Investment Survey said late Friday it would pay shareholders a special dividend of $2 a share on Nov. 12 instead of its regular quarterly dividend of 20 cents per share.
The special dividend amounts to $20 million or almost half of the company’s $43 million in cash on hand, Crain’s said on its website. About $17.3 million of this dividend will go to Buttner, who controls 86.5 percent of Value Line’s stock, it said.
Buttner, 75, stepped aside last year at the company started by her father in 1931 after the SEC barred her from the brokerage business.
The government said that her firm, which publishes a widely followed investor newsletter and also manages about $2 billion in client assets, cheated customers for almost 20 years by overcharging them for mutual fund trades. Value Line agreed to $45 million in penalties.
But even in her absence, Buttner hasn’t been far from Value Line, Crain’s said. It said she appointed her long-time lawyer, Howard Brecher, as her replacement.
Earlier this year, she had Value Line issue a special dividend of $3 a share, which put $26 million in her pocket but brought the amount of cash at the company down to about $40 million.
Several directors opposed the special dividend, arguing Value Line couldn’t afford it as it tried to rebuild its struggling publishing business, Crain’s said. Buttner booted those directors off the board.
“Replacements included the chief of police in Westport, Conn., where Mrs. Buttner lives,” it said.
