C.H. Robinson Reaches Standstill Agreement With Activist Investor

C.H. Robinson, America’s largest freight broker by revenue, fired its previous chief executive,

Bob Biesterfeld,

on New Year’s Eve, a few weeks after Mr. Barber, a former

United Parcel Service Inc.

executive, joined C.H. Robinson’s board. The board appointed

Scott Anderson,

C.H. Robinson’s then board chair as interim CEO as the board said it would start an immediate search for a permanent successor. 

JPMorgan Chase & Co. wrote in a note Monday that Mr. Barber, who retired as chief operating officer at UPS in January 2020, would be an ideal candidate for CEO. 

He is “highly regarded as a logistics operator who helped turnaround U.S. peak season problems at UPS during his tenure as COO,” the analysts wrote. 

Mr. Barber couldn’t be reached for comment.

Jodee Kozlak,

chair of C.H. Robinson’s board, said Monday that Mr. Biesterfeld’s firing was a board decision. “The board is committed to conducting, and has already started, an open and inclusive search to find our next CEO,” Ms. Kozlak said.

C.H. Robinson’s standstill agreement with Ancora, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, is similar to the first deal reached between the two sides in February 2022. It maintains two seats on C.H. Robinson’s board for Ancora representatives,

Jay Winship

and

Henry Maier,

in return for assurances that Ancora won’t disparage the company or launch a proxy fight.

It also renews the possibility that the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based company might sell its global forwarding unit.

Ancora has been pushing since last year for C.H. Robinson to sell the unit, according to a person familiar with the company. Under the latest agreement, Mr. Winship maintains leadership of C.H. Robinson’s capital allocation and planning committee, which would consider any sale.

Besides its truck-focused U.S. domestic business, C.H. Robinson is a major player managing freight flows on the world’s busiest ocean trade lanes between China and the U.S. Danish forwarder DSV A/S was reported last year by Reuters to be a prospective buyer of the international freight forwarding operation.

DSV’s chief executive,

Jens Bjørn Andersen,

declined last year to comment on the report. He said in an interview that the U.S. market is a key target for his company’s expansion plans. 

C.H. Robinson’s chair, Ms. Kozlak, said of the forwarding unit, “In a time of increasingly complex supply chains, we believe in the strategic value of our portfolio, but will always evaluate it against what is best for our shareholders.”

C.H. Robinson is the largest domestic player in freight brokerage, which matches cargo with available trucks, according to research group Armstrong & Associates. The company reported $23.1 billion in gross revenue in 2021. 

Mr. Biesterfeld joined C.H. Robinson in 1999 and became CEO in 2019 during an earlier management shake-up. The Covid-19 pandemic drove a surge in freight demand and in profits. But the market turned last year and in November Mr. Biesterfeld said C.H. Robinson had hired too many people and would need to make $175 million in gross cost savings by the fourth quarter of 2023.   

C.H. Robinson has retained executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. to find a permanent chief executive.

Write to Paul Berger at paul.berger@wsj.com