High-Powered Grifols Lawyer Is at Heart of Hedge Fund Battle
- Hedge fund Mason wants Daga ousted from the Grifols board
- Daga says he offered to step down but board wants him to stay
For hedge fund Mason Capital Management LLC, much of what ails Grifols SA can be laid at the door of one man: Tomas Daga. But for the drugmaker, he’s someone who’s helped transform the once-tiny Spanish blood plasma company into a world leader.
As Grifols emerges from a failed attempt by Brookfield Asset Management to take it over, the spotlight is increasingly turning to the behind-the-scenes role played at the company by Daga. A partner at Grifols’ go-to law firm Osborne Clarke, which advises the company on all legal matters, Daga has been a fixture on the drugmaker’s board for decades, driving its strategy. A long-time friend of the Grifols family, Daga is now being targeted by Mason, which wants him ousted from a reconstituted board. The fund accuses him of conflict of interest and acting on the board as a proxy for the family, which owns about 35% of the eponymous maker of medicines for diseases like hepatitis and hemophilia.