Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-09-24
Form Type: DEFC14A
Source: 0001213900-25-090869
Chunk: 7

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-09-24
Form: DEFC14A
Chunk 7
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The
Board attempts to justify its failure to legitimately seek alternative proposals by claiming that it surmised that no other party would
be able or willing to provide greater value than Alcon or advance discussions at the pace at which Alcon was prepared to proceed.9

But, we believe that is merely an excuse—one lacking
sufficient justification on the Company’s part.

In deciding
to sell the Company for cash, the Board was obligated to ensure it had in hand the best offer—and especially the highest price.
Failing to even engage with the five or ten most likely interested parties left the Board, and us as stockholders, without any basis to
be confident that the Board’s chosen transaction was the best available alternative for STAAR. We are confident that a properly
conducted process—one that solicited interest from other parties beyond Alcon—would have yielded a much higher price for the
Company.

The unprompted
interest from Party A and Party B underscores, in our view, the folly of the Board’s decision to conduct what was, effectively,
an exclusive process with Alcon. Indeed, we recently have heard from several parties (none of whom we believe are Party A or Party B)
who also seemingly had, and continue to have, an interest in owning the Company, but who were never contacted, never provided diligence
materials, and never invited to make a proposal.

We believe
a board that was properly focused on maximizing stockholder value would, at a minimum, have initiated contact with other potential counterparties,
even if only to generate interest, foment competitive tension, and facilitate price discovery. That STAAR’s Board failed to do so
is, in our view, inexcusable.

The Wrong Time to Transact

We also believe Alcon’s latest approach to STAAR
was opportunistically timed.

First,
for the past year, STAAR’s stock has traded below its intrinsic value, in our view, because of transitory issues with inventory
in China. But the Company’s second quarter financial results and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q—released just a day after
the Proposed Merger was announced—told a different story, reflecting an abatement of the inventory challenges the Company faced
in 2024 and early 2025.10The Company also reported a significant reduction in its expenses,11
which suggests, in our view, that it is well on its way to returning to substantial profitability.12

| 5 | Id. |

| 6 | See