Stillwater owns and operates the Stillwater and East Boulder platinum-group-metals (PGM) mines in south-cen-tral Montana, the primary product being palladium. The company operates a smelter, refinery and laboratory at Columbus, Montana, to upgrade the con-centrate to a PGM-rich filter cake and also processes spent catalyst material through its recycling facility to recover PGMs.

Schweitzer was one of four new directors elected to the Stillwater board at the company’s annual general meet-ing of shareholders on May 2. Beginning in February, the Clinton Group hedge fund campaigned for Stillwater share-holders to replace the entire board with a proposed slate of new directors. At the meeting, four of Clinton Group candidates were elected to Stillwater’s eight-member board, with Schweitzer being among the more vocal critics of Stillwater management.

The Clinton Group charged that Stillwater management had destroyed shareholder value by over-paying for acquisitions of the Marathon PGM-cop-per project in Ontario in 2010 ($133 million) and the Altar copper-gold deposit in Argentina in 2011 ($487 mil-lion); by over-paying its executives; and by over-spending on palladium market development through its association with the International Palladium Alliance.

McAllister and the Stillwater board responded that none of Clinton’s pro-posed group of directors had the qualifi-cations or experience to run a mining company and that they offered no new strategy or detailed operating plan.

With the May 20 announcement that Schweitzer had replaced McAllister as Stillwater chairman, the Clinton Group got what it wanted.