By Toni Clarke and Soyoung Kim
(Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn appears to have secured one of the four board seats he sought at drugmaker Forest Laboratories Inc
Forest said Icahn nominee Pierre Legault, a former executive at several big drugmakers, was likely to win a seat on the 10-member board following a bitter proxy battle. He would replace current director Dan Goldwasser, who chairs the compensation committee.
"Shareholders are sending the message loud and clear that they're fed up," Daniel Ninivaggi, one of the Icahn nominees, said at the Forest meeting in New York.
Ninivaggi said Forest needs to be more open about succession plans for its longtime chief executive, Howard Solomon, and should adopt basic corporate governance measures.
Icahn, in his second proxy fight against Forest in as many years, had sought seats for Legualt; Ninivaggi, president of Icahn Enterprises; Eric Ende, a former analyst at Merrill Lynch; and Andrew Fromkin, former chief executive of Clinical Data.
Forest had argued that Icahn's nominees would not add any value to its board and that its directors were best qualified to generate growth for the company as generic competition curtails revenue from its two biggest products - the antidepressant Lexapro and the Alzheimer's drug Namenda.
Forest had also said Ende and Fromkin had conflicts of interest, making them unfit for board positions. Forest had rejected efforts to broker an agreement with Icahn.
Shareholders received conflicting advice from influential proxy advisers. Institutional Shareholder Services backed the nominations of Legault and Ninivaggi, while Glass Lewis & Co rejected Icahn's entire slate.
Forest shares rose 0.5 percent to $34.14 in early trading on Wednesday.
(Editing by Michele Gershberg, Jeffrey Benkoe and John Wallace)
