Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-12-09
Form Type: DFAN14A
Source: 0001213900-25-119731
Chunk: 3

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-12-09
Form: DFAN14A
Chunk 3
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’s Chair
had a longstanding commercial relationship. The Board was later forced to acknowledge that STAAR’s CEO and Chair had ignored legitimate
buyout interest when this fact was disclosed – not voluntarily by STAAR, but in response to a question from one of the proxy advisory
firms.

Shareholders were poised to overwhelmingly
reject this ill-conceived transaction before the Board postponed the shareholder vote on the sale three times. Then, the Board begrudgingly
and disingenuously attempted to band-aid its broken sale process with a performative go-shop mechanism that predictably failed to produce
a superior proposal. Any sophisticated director would surely know that the belated and appended go-shop process was not designed in a
manner to attract qualified bidders and proposals: interested parties were asked to sign off-market, multi-year standstills (unlike Alcon
itself, which never signed a standstill); had to subject their proposed terms to Alcon’s over-the-shoulder inspection and unilateral
matching rights; and were given just days to engage with the Company. The Board also refused to augment its own composition to enhance
its credibility with shareholders. In our view, the “fix” was as poorly conceived and executed as the initial, flawed process,
and nothing announced today changes the fact that this transaction has been plagued by process issues and conflicts from the very beginning.

The Board also spent months claiming that Alcon’s offer of $28 per share was the result of vigorous negotiations and represented
the highest price available for the Company. And yet, Alcon has now offered an additional $150 million – but only after shareholders
stepped in and demanded more consideration in response to the Board’s feckless negotiations. How can shareholders have any confidence
that this latest proposal from Alcon represents its best offer, especially given that Alcon offered more than twice as much per share
just 14 months ago? With a properly designed competitive process, and new directors overseeing the execution of that process, Alcon finally
would be faced with genuine competition. How much more might it be willing to pay then?

Finally, we have noted for months that
STAAR’s executives were poised to receive a massive windfall from the proposed transaction. The CEO, for example, was entitled to
$24 million for just five months of work under the original terms of the transaction. We rightly worried that his personal incentives
to consummate a deal were so strong that the deal process, timing and price were compromised in the interest of serving the