Company: STAA
Filing Date: 2025-09-29
Form Type: DFAN14A
Source: 0001213900-25-093211
Chunk: 7

Company: STAAR SURGICAL CO
Filing Date: 2025-09-29
Form: DFAN14A
Chunk 7
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 Proposed Merger; those results and projections showed an abatement of the inventory
challenges the Company had faced in 2024 and early 2025 and a significant reduction in expenses. .

156 West 56 Street,
3 Floor, New York, New York 10019

Tel: 212 508-5735 Fax: 212 508-5756

We are concerned that the otherwise
inexplicable decision to sell the Company at an obviously inopportune time, after a limited and questionable process and at an inadequate
price, was influenced by the Board’s numerous business entanglements with Alcon and management’s personal financial interests.
The Chair of the Board was a consultant to Alcon when the dialogue with Alcon began, while two other directors at that time had significant
business interests with Alcon. As best we can tell from the proxy disclosure, it was not until our firm raised the conflict-of-interest
issue with STAAR’s CEO that the Chair revealed the extent of her business ties with Alcon to her fellow directors, and that was
just two days before the Merger Agreement was signed.

Moreover,
in the aggregate, STAAR’s executives are poised to earn approximately $55 million in immediate compensation if the deal is closed.
The Company’s CEO alone stands to receive approximately $24 million in compensation, due to the Board’s decisions that accelerate
the vesting of his stock grants and award payouts well above target performance levels. While directionally aligned with the Company’s
recent and above-consensus projections, the awarding of compensation at these levels certainly belies the strategic alarmism in the Company’s
proxy solicitation materials. For the CEO, the Proposed Merger provides a significant and riskless windfall for just five months of work.

It is clear to us that the Proposed
Merger is the result of poor timing, a flawed process, and conflicts of interest. We are not surprised, then, that another of the Company’s
largest stockholders, Yunqi Capital Ltd., owner of 5.1% of the outstanding shares, is also publicly opposing the transaction. The unjustifiably
low purchase price reflects, in our view, temporary investor pessimism resulting from the Company’s past challenges. But we do not
believe these challenges are insurmountable, nor do we believe they are likely to persist. We are convinced that STAAR can, and should,
deliver value to stockholders far in excess of the $28 per share that Alcon is offering