Stocks to Watch: Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI), Visa Inc (NYSE:V), Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI)

Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) on the heels of a complete upheaval of its board at the restaurant operator's 2014 annual meeting, said Clarence Otis stepped down from his role as CEO and will be succeeded on an interim basis by Gene Lee, previously president and chief operating officer. The moves come after Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) shareholders on Friday elected all 12 directors nominated by activist investor Starboard value in a full replacement of the board, sending a bold message to management that they wanted change.The new board appointed Jeffrey C. Smith as independent nonexecutive chairman, the company said Tuesday, while noting the board appointed Lee to the interim CEO post. The board's search committee will conduct a full search for the company's new CEO, with the search including both internal and external candidates, Smith said.Visa Inc (NYSE:V), a provider of payments, has entered into an agreement with 3PEA International, a provider of prepaid card programs and processing services. Under the arrangement 3PEA will exclusively issue Visa-branded prepaid cards for its PaySign brand of prepaid cards. Over the past 52 weeks, Visa Inc (NYSE:V) has traded between $190.02 and $235.50.Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI), the investment-fund manager and shareholder Corvex Management released a proposal to improve the shared-wireless-infrastructure provider's capital-allocation strategy that it said could lift the stock above $100 per share "within a short time frame, and compounding further from there." Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) is trading in a 52-week range of $68.44 to $81.75."We believe Crown Castle's valuation can be improved dramatically and sustainably by changing its capital allocation plan, expanding the company's investor base and closing its discount to peers and intrinsic value," said Keith Meister, Managing Partner of Corvex, which owns about 12.6 million shares, or about $1 billion, of CCI.In a letter, Corvex said it sees "a near-term opportunity for Crown Castle to drive a 27% re-rating in its equity, and the potential for over 60% upside in 15 months." It added: "Once the company's equity currency has strengthened, Crown Castle can aggressively pursue a Verizon towers transaction, creating even greater long-term value for shareholders. However, if the company does not have the right cost of capital, it should not be pursuing acquisitions or issuing equity, whether for Verizon's towers or any other transaction."Corvex also said its analysis "suggests a change in capital allocation could result in Crown Castle's stock trading for in excess of $100.00 per share within a short time frame, and compounding further from there."In a response, Crown Castle CEO Ben Moreland said: "We continually review our capital allocation strategy and consider all input from our shareholders as we aim to create long-term shareholder value. As we have previously stated publicly, we plan to address our capital allocation policy, including dividends, on our 2014 third quarter earnings call scheduled for October 31, 2014."