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

The global cloud expands what can be made digitally viable from electric vehicles (EV) and virtual reality (VR) headsets to artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.

Chanel Holden

2025-04-30 08:27:00 Wednesday ET

The global cloud expands what can be made digitally viable from electric vehicles (EV) and virtual reality (VR) headsets to artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.

The multiple layers of the world cloud Internet help expand what can be made digitally viable from electric vehicles (EV) and virtual reality (VR) headsets

+See More

St Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard indicates that his ideal baseline scenario remains a mutually beneficial China-U.S. trade deal.

Charlene Vos

2019-06-09 11:29:00 Sunday ET

St Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard indicates that his ideal baseline scenario remains a mutually beneficial China-U.S. trade deal.

St Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard indicates that his ideal baseline scenario remains a mutually beneficial China-U.S. trade deal. Bullard ind

+See More

Stock market misvaluation and corporate investment payout

John Fourier

2022-11-15 10:30:00 Tuesday ET

Stock market misvaluation and corporate investment payout

Stock market misvaluation and corporate investment payout The behavioral catering theory suggests that stock market misvaluation can have a first-order

+See More

Would you rather receive $1,000 each day for one month or a magic penny that doubles each day over the same month?

Laura Hermes

2017-04-07 15:34:00 Friday ET

Would you rather receive $1,000 each day for one month or a magic penny that doubles each day over the same month?

Would you rather receive $1,000 each day for one month or a magic penny that doubles each day over the same month? At first glance, this counterintuitive

+See More

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Palantir (U.S. stock symbol: $PLTR).

Olivia London

2025-10-04 13:37:00 Saturday ET

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fundamental analysis of Palantir (U.S. stock symbol: $PLTR).

Stock Synopsis: With a new Python program, we use, adapt, apply, and leverage each of the mainstream Gemini Gen AI models to conduct this comprehensive fund

+See More

The U.S. stock market delivers a hefty long-term average return of 11% per annum.

Peter Prince

2017-03-09 05:32:00 Thursday ET

The U.S. stock market delivers a hefty long-term average return of 11% per annum.

From 1927 to 2017, the U.S. stock market has delivered a hefty average return of about 11% per annum. The U.S. average stock market return is high in stark

+See More