Angeion shareholder blasts company, wants to oust board

A shareholder of struggling Angeion Corp. (Nasdaq: ANGN) blasted the company for poor performance and seeks to rally other shareholders in an effort to oust the Minnesota device company’s board.

Danville, California-based BlueLine Partners, which owns 7.2 percent of Angeion’s outstanding shares, is attempting to gather signatures from other shareholders in an effort to remove all of Angeion’s existing directors and replace them with a new board nominated by shareholders, according to a statement and regulatory filing from BlueLine.

“The general market has utterly lost interest in Angeion and is giving its objectively sound business almost no economic value, ” BlueLine said in the filing, noting that Angeion’s stock price has dropped 67 percent since the beginning of 2007. During the time while Angeion’s stock price has swooned, the company has more than doubled the pay of its directors, according to the filing.

In a written statement, St. Paul, Minnesota-based Angeion said it had “identified false and misleading statements” in BlueLine’s filing, but it didn’t specify which statements it was referring to. Angeion said it would respond more fully and “refute the falsehoods in the near future.”

About 20 percent of Angeion’s shareholders expressed support for BlueLine’s proposal within 24 hours of the regulatory filing, BlueLine said.

Since emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002, Angeion has struggled. The company, which makes and sells cardiorespiratory diagnostic devices under the brand names of MedGraphics and New Leaf, has lost money for two consecutive years, dropping $1.6 million last year and $686,000 in 2008.