Ironsides Criticizes Nefarious Conduct of External Manager That Occurred Ahead of FSFR Annual Meeting

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Ironsides Partners LLC and its affiliates, one of the largest stockholders of Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp. FSFR with a combined ownership interest of approximately 6.4% of FSFR's outstanding shares, today criticized the actions of the controllers of FSFR's external manager for directing votes at the FSFR 2016 Annual Meeting held this morning. According to preliminary vote tabulations, the vote on the election of Robert C. Knapp and Richard W. Cohen to FSFR's Board of Directors is too close to call.

Ahead of this morning's meeting, Fifth Street Asset Management Inc. FSAM, the parent company of FSFR's external manager, announced that Mangrove Partners agreed to vote its approximately 932,000 FSFR shares together with FSFR management, as part of an agreement under which Mangroves' founder and President, Nathaniel August, would be appointed to FSAM's Board of Directors. FSAM is controlled by FSFR's founder Leonard M. Tannenbaum.

This follows a prior announcement that RiverNorth Capital Management, LLC agreed to vote its approximately 5.7% holding in FSFR with management, after Mr. Tannenbaum agreed to purchase RiverNorth's position in Fifth Street Finance Corp. FSC at a premium to market. FSC is a sister company to FSFR that was also founded by Mr. Tannenbaum.

Robert C. Knapp, Chief Investment Officer of Ironsides, said, "We thank stockholders for their support in the face of an 11^th hour vote swap and other nefarious dealings. The investment community at large should be appalled by the actions of the controllers of FSFR's external manager, who utilized their resources to cause the direction of votes in favor of management at the FSFR Annual Meeting. Investors should be forcefully asking whether an external investment manager should be allowed to interfere in a stockholder vote in this way, in order to promote its own interests.

"We believe once all ballots are counted results will show that unaffiliated stockholders by a substantial margin supported our efforts for changes to the Board at FSFR, given FSFR's prolonged underperformance, pervasive discount to NAV and payment of unjustified incentive fees."

About Ironsides

Ironsides Partners LLC is an investment management firm and SEC-registered investment adviser based in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm was founded in 2007 by Robert C. Knapp, who serves as Managing Director.

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