The News
Six Flags will add four new directors to its board at its upcoming shareholder meeting, including AB Inbev’s former M&A architect and chief cost-cutter, in a settlement that ends months of private discussions with one of its largest investors.
The changes come just eight months after the company completed its merger with Cedar Fair, which combined two of the three large standalone amusement park operators. Four new directors will stand for election at the upcoming meeting, two designated by Six Flags and two by Dendur Capital, which owns roughly 3% of Six Flags and has been privately pressuring the company for months, according to people familiar with the matter.
The new directors are Felipe Dutra, former CFO of AB Inbev; Sandy Cochran, former CEO of Cracker Barrel; Michael Colglazier, a longtime Disney executive; and Steven Hoffman, who runs a venture firm.
Widely considered recession-proof, amusement parks took a hit during Covid before rebounding. But while Disney’s and Comcast’s theme parks divisions cut costs and improved their margins coming out of the pandemic, Cedar Fair’s finances worsened.
It rejected takeover bids from Six Flags and SeaWorld in 2019 and 2022, respectively, before agreeing in 2023 to a merger of equals with Six Flags that put Cedar Fair’s CEO in charge and installed Six Flag’s CEO as executive board chair. As part of that transaction, Cedar Fair also dropped a wonky tax structure that had insulated it from institutional shareholder pressure.
Dendur began talking to the company in 2023, when it was still Cedar Fair, and continued after the merger, urging it to improve margins, governance, and investor communications, the people said.
Rohan’s view
Six Flags’ existing board was a mish-mash of legacy directors from both companies and overdue for a refresh. But one director in particular — which Six Flags identified as a Dendur candidate — bears watching. Dutra was a longtime executive at AB Inbev and the architect behind its M&A strategy. He was also a pioneer of zero-based budgeting for the company, which forces companies and business units to start from scratch (zero base) every year and rationalize every cost, rather than simply carrying over the previous year’s plan.
The dual M&A and accounting skillset makes Dutra a plausible CEO candidate but also a powerful board member, and he’ll likely be tapped to achieve the kind of margin improvement that Dendur and other investors are seeking. He is also close to 3G Capital, the Brazilian investment firm that has been a buyer of big consumer companies, including AB Inbev and Kraft.