Carl Icahn mulls over steps to shake up the board of SandRidge Energy after it adopts a counter poison pill.

Jacob Miramar

2017-11-29 07:42:00 Wed ET

The octogenarian billionaire and activist investor Carl Icahn mulls over steps to shake up the board of SandRidge Energy after the oil-and-gas company adopts a poison pill that aims to prevent him from scooping up more shares.

Icahn became the company's largest shareholder after he personally disclosed a 13.5% equity stake in SandRidge in November 2017. He has taken issue with the board's strategic plan to buy Bonanza Creek Energy for $750 million in cash and stock. From Icahn's perspective, this irrational deal demonstrates executive exuberance and overvaluation that would ultimately erode shareholder value.

In response, SandRidge introduces the poison pill in order to stop blockholders such as Carl Icahn and Fir Tree Partners from buying more equity stakes above the 10% threshold. Fir Tree has complained that the Bonanza deal would depart substantially from SandRidge's 2016 exit from bankruptcy because the current bid is way too high and so makes little business sense. In addition to this highly controversial poison pill, SandRidge's directors may or may not have breached any triads of fiduciary duty (good faith, loyalty, and due care) in a way that would be commensurate with the business judgment rule.

Although it is difficult to anticipate how the poison pill and its concomitant board fight will unravel over time, Icahn's race toward the top can be long and arduous. Time will tell whether his board battle proves worthy and enhances sustainable shareholder wealth creation.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried critique that executive pay often cannot help explain the stock return and operational performance of most corporations.

Daisy Harvey

2023-07-28 11:28:00 Friday ET

Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried critique that executive pay often cannot help explain the stock return and operational performance of most corporations.

Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried critique that executive pay often cannot help explain the stock return and operational performance of most U.S. public corpor

+See More

Tech unicorns blitzscale business niches for better scale economies from Uber and Lyft to Pinterest, Slack, and Zoom.

Dan Rochefort

2019-05-03 11:29:00 Friday ET

Tech unicorns blitzscale business niches for better scale economies from Uber and Lyft to Pinterest, Slack, and Zoom.

Key tech unicorns blitzscale business niches for better scale economies from Uber and Lyft to Pinterest, Slack, and Zoom. LinkedIn cofounder and serial entr

+See More

Fed minutes reflect gradual interest rate normalization in response to high inflation risk.

Dan Rochefort

2018-02-15 07:43:00 Thursday ET

Fed minutes reflect gradual interest rate normalization in response to high inflation risk.

Fed minutes reflect gradual interest rate normalization in response to high inflation risk. FOMC members revise up the economic projections made at the Dece

+See More

President Trump nominates Jerome Powell to be the new Federal Reserve chairman.

Fiona Sydney

2017-10-03 18:39:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump nominates Jerome Powell to be the new Federal Reserve chairman.

President Trump has nominated Jerome Powell to run the Federal Reserve once Fed Chair Janet Yellen's current term expires in February 2018. Trump's

+See More

Apple adds fresh features to its new iPad Pro and MacBook Air in addition to its prior suite of iPhones.

Joseph Corr

2018-11-03 11:36:00 Saturday ET

Apple adds fresh features to its new iPad Pro and MacBook Air in addition to its prior suite of iPhones.

Apple adds fresh features to its new iPad Pro and MacBook Air in addition to its prior suite of iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR back in September 20

+See More

Platform enterprises leverage network effects, scale economies, and information cascades to boost exponential user growth.

Fiona Sydney

2020-05-28 15:37:00 Thursday ET

Platform enterprises leverage network effects, scale economies, and information cascades to boost exponential user growth.

Platform enterprises leverage network effects, scale economies, and information cascades to boost exponential business growth. Laure Reillier and Benoit

+See More