Millennium Partners Wants Sunrise Senior Living (SRZ) Sold or Management Replaced

Hedge fund Millennium Partners, L.P. released a May 31 letter it sent to the Board of Directors of Sunrise Senior Living Inc. (NYSE: SRZ). In the letter, Millennium called on the Sunrise Board to take prompt action either to sell the company or to replace management.

In the letter the firm said, "We believe that this Company, with this management, does not belong as a participant in the public securities markets. Accordingly, we urge the Board to take appropriate steps to (1) sell or merge the Company either in a public market transaction or in a "going private" transaction; (2) restructure the Company in a transformative way so that its different elements--primarily, real estate development and ownership on the one hand and healthcare facility operation on the other--can be more readily appreciated and valued by the market or, if neither of those seems feasible, then, at the very least, (3) recruit new management that is more professionally competent at successfully managing a public company. To facilitate any such course of action, we urge the Board to eliminate all of the defensive measures that the Company has in place. While such measures may have been useful in the past, at this point they serve only as an impediment to a value-creating transaction for the Company's various stakeholders."

Millennium said the Board of Sunrise has not responded to their letter.

Millennium owns approximately 1.3M shares of common stock of Sunrise Senior Living, or about 2.5% of the shares.