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Craig Maier, CEO of Frisch's Restaurants Inc., can breathe a little easier these days.
Jerry Ruyan and Barry Nussbaum, two dissident Frisch's shareholders who mounted a 1996 proxy fight to get elected as directors, have sold a significant chunk of their stake back to the restaurant chain for $10 a share.
The relationship between Frisch's and the two investors, who call their investment group Wolverine Partners, has always been "contentious," Maier said.
"It made it very hard to get the share price up when a director and major shareholder was always being negative in the press," Maier said. "What we will not miss is the frequent personal attacks in the press, especially by Mr. Ruyan."
Just recently, at the company's annual meeting in October, Ruyan and Nussbaum put forth a proposal suggesting Frisch's hire an investment bank to find ways to boost the company's stock price, which...