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

Michael Woodford provides the theoretical foundations of monetary policy rules in ever more efficient financial markets.

Fiona Sydney

2023-09-07 11:30:00 Thursday ET

Michael Woodford provides the theoretical foundations of monetary policy rules in ever more efficient financial markets.

Michael Woodford provides the theoretical foundations of monetary policy rules in ever more efficient financial markets. Michael Woodford (2003)  

+See More

Janet Yellen worries about U.S. government debt accumulation, expects new interest rate increases, and warns of the next economic recession.

Amy Hamilton

2018-11-05 10:40:00 Monday ET

Janet Yellen worries about U.S. government debt accumulation, expects new interest rate increases, and warns of the next economic recession.

Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen worries about U.S. government debt accumulation, expects new interest rate increases, and warns of the next economic recession

+See More

Mario Draghi declares the ECB agreement on a thorny set of revisions to Basel 3.

Rose Prince

2017-11-25 06:34:00 Saturday ET

Mario Draghi declares the ECB agreement on a thorny set of revisions to Basel 3.

Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, heads the international committee of financial supervisors and has declared their landmark agreement o

+See More

William Easterly critiques several economic development policies and then indicates that bottom-up solutions often result in macro policy success in spite of nation states.

John Fourier

2023-05-07 10:27:00 Sunday ET

William Easterly critiques several economic development policies and then indicates that bottom-up solutions often result in macro policy success in spite of nation states.

William Easterly critiques several economic development policies and then indicates that bottom-up solutions often result in macro policy success in spite o

+See More

Fed Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook.

Dan Rochefort

2019-03-29 12:28:00 Friday ET

Fed Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell answers CBS News 60 Minutes questions about the recent U.S. economic outlook and interest rate cycle. Powell views the c

+See More

McKinsey Global Institute analyzes 315 U.S. cities in terms of how tech automation affects their workers in the next 10 years.

Dan Rochefort

2019-08-10 21:44:00 Saturday ET

McKinsey Global Institute analyzes 315 U.S. cities in terms of how tech automation affects their workers in the next 10 years.

McKinsey Global Institute analyzes 315 U.S. cities and 3,000 counties in terms of how tech automation affects their workers in the next 5 to 10 years. This

+See More