Post Properties' Ex-Chairman Sues to Save Benefits

Williams' lawyers at Atlanta-based McKenna Long & Aldridge won a temporary restraining order from Cobb County Superior Court Judge Kenneth O. Nix to stop the vote for 30 days.

Williams, who founded Post Properties 32 years ago, sued after learning company directors approved a resolution that would limit the 59-year-old apartment developer from obtaining proprietary information from his own firm. The directors had also agreed to dismiss Williams immediately and evict him from his office at Post Riverside on Northside Parkway. Williams' contract calls for him to hold his office until 2013.

Williams and Post officials couldn't be reached at GlobeSt.com's publication deadline. But Atlanta multifamily brokers intimate with Post's problems over the past three years tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity that Post directors were incensed over Williams' plans to head a management buyout of the company in November 2002.

"Things were never jolly again in the boardroom after that episode," an Atlanta broker close to the proceedings tells GlobeSt.com.

Williams is Post Properties' largest individual shareholder. The company has 36.9 million common shares outstanding. At noon Tuesday, the stock was trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $24.44, up from $24.28 on March 24.

The lawsuit clearly shows Williams didn't voluntarily relinquish his chairman's position on Feb. 21, as he had indicated in a previously published report, brokers following the company tell GlobeSt.com. Robert C. Goddard III, chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Goddard Investment Group LLC, replaced Williams.

At that time, the company announced it would take charges of $12 million to $14 million in the first quarter to cover payments and benefits provided to Williams and former vice chairman John T. Glover. Glover remains a director of the company.

According to the Post's Web site, the company's directors, besides Williams, Goddard and Glover, are CEO and president David Stockert; Arthur M. Blank, co-founder and retired co-chairman, The Home Depot Inc.; Herschel M. Bloom, partner, King & Spaulding law firm, Atlanta; Russell R. French, general partner, Noro-Moseley Partners; Charles E. Rice, chairman, Mayport Venture Partners LLC; and Ronald de Waal, chairman, WE International b.v. (The Netherlands) and vice chairman, Saks Inc. (USA).

Speculation that Post Properties might be sold have surfaced frequently over the past two years as the company struggled with its finances. In its last financials, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2002 for fiscal 3Q that ended Sept. 30, 2002, funds from operations totaled $27.2 million or 65 cents per diluted shares, versus $37.5 million or 87 cents in the same 2001 period.

Net income was $3.3 million or nine cents per diluted share compared with $24.4 million or 64 cents in 3Q 2001. Year-to-date net income was $39.6 million or $1.97 per diluted share compared to $77.44 million or $2 in the same 2001 period.

Total revenue from continuing operations was $86.7 million versus $93.8 million previously reported. Year-to-date revenue was $254.9 million compared to $287.7 million in the prior year.