Leadership Lacking at Piper Sandler and Allina

A Profit-First Approach to Healthcare

Minnesota investment bank giant Piper Sandler is largely owned by institutional investors like BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

Now, Piper Sandler leadership are spreading this profit-first approach to Minnesota healthcare.

President Debbra L. Schoneman and board member Tom Schreier both sit on the Board of Directors for Allina Health System. This Piper-backed Board of Directors recently appointed Lisa Shannon, a first-time CEO, to lead Allina, the second largest employer in the State of Minnesota

While Schoneman and Schreier sit on the Board of Directors that hired Shannon at Allina, they have remained silent on her failure of leadership during negotiations with Minnesota nurses. Rather than bargain a fair contract with nurses, Shannon paid millions to replace Minnesota workers, the same type of decision which cost Allina $149 million in 2016.

Perhaps Piper executives have been distracted from Shannon’s failure of leadership at Allina due to their own recent bad news at Piper Sandler. As of September 20, Piper Sandler stock was down 21 percent from the previous year. Recently released reports reveal:

  • Revenues declined nearly 31 percent
  • Net income declined by 69 percent
  • Earnings per share declined by 54 percent

Piper Sandler: Failure of Leadership
Recent poor financial performance at Piper Sandler may signal to investors that it is time to sell if the company does not get back on track. It is telling that Piper Sandler’s own general counsel, John Geelan, sold $449k worth of shares in the last quarter of 2021.
This Minneapolis-based company is no stranger to controversy. Since 2000, Piper Sandler, its subsidiaries, and predecessors racked up more than $43.6M in regulatory fines, many of which were related to investor protections. In addition, Piper has been recently fined and censured by both the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq Stock Market (NASDAQ).

Lisa Shannon: Failure of Leadership
In 2016 Shannon oversaw the University of Louisville Hospital at a time when state inspectors identified deficiencies in nursing services. Healthcare workers, including doctors, criticized hospital executives for instituting layoffs and cuts, which they alleged forced the hospital to rely on travel nurses unfamiliar with procedures. At the time, Shannon partially blamed the findings on a nationwide nursing shortage. Now, with less than a year on the job, Shannon has been criticized yet again for failing to put patients before profits and to settle a fair contract with nurses.

Schreier, as a Board Member at Piper and Allina, has been lauded for his leadership to “thoughtfully urge Allina Health to not return to normal, but make changes and improvements to address the challenges and barriers to care that existed prior to the pandemic,” yet he has not publicly intervened to urge Shannon to retain nurses with a fair contract. With annual income of $4.5M, Schoneman is clearly disconnected from the front-line workers who risked their lives during the pandemic.

Allina’s Failure of Leadership: Hurting Nurses and Patients at the Bedside
The failure of Shannon’s leadership is impacting nurses and patients at the bedside. Every day Shannon chooses to under-staff nurses, patients are waiting longer in the waiting rooms or with their call lights on, as nurses are stretched thin trying to help patients use the restroom, turn over in bed, or with medications. Shannon’s failure to approve a fair contract forced nurses to take to the streets this past week, meaning patients received care from replacement workers hired by Shannon who do not know our local hospitals and our patients like Minnesota nurses do.

As Angela Bechetti, RN at Allina’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital told WCCO-TV during the strike, the replacement nurses hired by Shannon “don’t know our policies [or] our protocols… They don’t know where stuff is, how does our unit work, how do our patients work and you can’t learn that in a couple days of training and that’s an issue for us.”

PUT PATIENTS BEFORE PROFITS

Call Shannon, Schoneman, and Schreier and demand Shannon settle a fair contract with nurses or step aside:

Lisa Shannon: (616) 295-3184
Debbra Schoneman: (612) 303-8069
Tom Schreier: (651) 765-8112