Bruder Elected Chairman of CN Board

Shauneen Bruder has been elected as chairman of the board of directors of Canadian National.

She previously served as  executive vice president of operations at the Royal Bank of Canada until retiring in October 2019.

Bruder has been a CN director since 2017. As CN chairman, Bruuder succeeds Robert Pace.

The board also elected as new directors David Freeman, Robert Knight and Susan Jones. Re-elected to the board were Jo-ann dePass Olsovsky, Denise Gray, Justin Howell, Kevin Lynch, Margaret McKenzie, Robert Phillips, and CN President and CEO Tracy Robinson.

The board is seeking a francophone — or someone who speaks French — who would be a Quebec-based director. CN has hired a Montreal search firm to help recruit that candidate.

CN Appoints New Member of Board of Directors

Canadian National has named as an independent member of the board of directors to replace a positi0on that opened by a resignation this past September.

Jo-ann dePass Olsovsky 56, is a former BNSF executive and currently serves as chief information officer at Salesforce. At BNSF she had been senior vice president and chief information officer who oversaw a drone inspection operations for bridges, track, and structures.

The appointment is effective immediately. Olsovsky replaced Julie Godin.

TCI Names its Nominees for CN Board

Activist hedge fund investor TCI Fund Management said Wednesday it plans to nominate four new members of the board of directors of Canadian National next spring.

TCI, which is based in London and serves as investment manager to CN shareholders CIFF Capital UK and The Children’s Investment Master Fund, has been waging a war of words with CN management in the wake of a failed effort by CN to acquire Kansas City Southern.

TCI had opposed the merger, which was effectively shut down when the U.S. Surface Transportation Board declined to approve CN’s plan to place KCS stock into a voting trust while regulators considered the merger.

The CN director candidates TCI intends to nominate include Gilbert Lamphere, a 40-year railroad executive;  Allison Landry, currently an independent director on the board of XPO Logistics;  Rob Knight, former chief financial officer of Union Pacific; and Paul Miller, a former CN executive (1978-2011) and 33-year railroad executive.

In a news release TCI sought to refute CN’s characterizations of TCI’s criticism of the Montreal-based Class 1 railroad’s finances. CN has described some of those criticisms as “false or misleading.”

A special meeting of CN shareholders has been set for March 22, 2022.

TCI also has indicated it will seek to replace CN CEO J.J. Ruest  with Jim Vena, a former executive at CN and UP.

“The quality of the board candidates is clear and indisputable. It is therefore notable that the [CN] board has said nothing negative about the nominees but has instead chosen to attack TCI in an attempt to divert attention from the excellence of the candidates,” TCI officials said in a statement.

Investor Seeks to Name 4 to CN Board

An activist hedge fund had requested a special meeting of the shareholders of Canadian National in an effort to shake up the board of director’s composition.

TCI Fund Management has named four individuals it will nominate for the railroad’s board of directors.

“We did not seek a proxy fight but without urgent action CN’s operational and financial performance will continue to lag its peers under a board that lacks the right railroad experience and operational expertise,” said Chris Hohn, TCI founder and managing partner in a statement.

CN said in its own statement that it knows about the TCI request but has yet to receive the formal requisition. The railroad said that once it does, it will review it and comment further.

Hohn has called for replacing CN Chairman Robert Pace and ousting CEO J.J. Ruest. He also wants CN to drop its bid to acquire Kansas City Southern.

CN is CN’s second-largest investor. It has proposed naming to the CN board Allison Landry, a former transportation analyst at Credit Suisse who is currently a board member of XPO Logistics;  Rob Knight, who was chief financial officer at Union Pacific for 15 years before retiring in 2019; Paul Miller, a Canadian Nation executive from 1978 to 2011, retiring as vice president of safety, sustainability, and network transportation;  and Gilbert Lamphere, a former CN and Illinois Central board member.

They would replace current board members Pace, Kevin Lynch, James O’Connor, and Laura Stein.

CN Elects 2 New Board Members

Canadian National has elected two new members to its board of directors.

Denise Gray is president of LG Energy Solution Michigan Tech Center while Justin Howell is a  senior investment manager at BMGI, which manages the assets of Cascade Investment.

Elected as chairman of the board was Robert Pace, president and chief executive officer of The Pace Group.

Also elected was Margaret McKenzie, who was appointed to the board in October 2020.

In a news release, CN said the election of Gray and McKenzie enabled the company to meet its goal of gender parity on the board a year earlier than planned.

The gender parity objective is part of the Class I’s environmental, sustainability and governance goals, which also include an update to board governance policies.

Those changes also called for reducing the board’s size to 10 independent directors plus the chief executive officer.

Reelected as CN directors were Shauneen Bruder, Julie Godin, Kevin Lynch, James O’Connor, Robert Phillips, Laura Stein, and CN President and CEO Jean-Jacques Ruest.

3 Seek Positions on CN Board of Directors

Canadian National has nominated two new members of its board of directors that it said in a news release would enable it to achieve gender parity among its independent directors.

Nominated were Denise Gray, president, LG Energy Solution Michigan Tech Center, and Justin Howell, senior investment manager at BMGI, which manages the assets of CN’s largest shareholder, Cascade Investment

Margaret McKenize, who was appointed to the board in October 2020, will stand for election for the first time.

Shareholders will consider the nominations at a meeting on April 27.

CSX, CN Name New Board Members

CSX has named Lt. General (Ret.) Thomas Bostick to its board of directors.

Bostick served in the U.S. Army for 38 years where he was chief of engineers and commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers.

After retiring from the Army, Bostick was chief operating officer of Intrexon and president of Intrexon Bioengineering.

He is a member of the boards of Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc., HireVue and Streamside Systems. He’s also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

In other board of director news, Canadian National appointed Margaret McKenzie to its board.

McKenzie has more than 30 years of experience in the energy sector serving in management, finance, accounting, compensation and corporate governance.

She was a founder and chief financial officer of Range Royalty Management, a private entity firm focused on acquiring oil and natural gas royalties in western Canada, from 2006 to 2014, and the chief financial officer of Profico Energy Management Ltd., a private exploration and production company, from 2000 to 2006.

McKenzie has served on public and private boards since 2006. She currently serves as a director of PrairieSky Royalty, Ovintiv Corporation and InterPipeline.