I was looking for a story to post since I had some free time. And there it was, a lead story at CNBC this evening:
SandRidge: a page from Chesapeake's playbook.
Two large SandRidge shareholders - hedge fund TPG-Axon Capital and
investment firm Mount Kellett Capital - have been pressing to replace
Ward and the board and to put the company up for sale.
"There is constant intermingling of the personal and
the private" between the CEO and SandRidge's business, said Dinakar
Singh, founder of TPG-Axon, which owns 6.7 percent of SandRidge.
Greg Dewey, a spokesman for SandRidge, declined to
respond to questions from Reuters on Ward's transactions or on any
similarities between SandRidge and Chesapeake. But he stressed that "in
each case, we have followed our own internal guidelines and we know the
(Securities and Exchange Commission) rules very well and have followed
those."
In addition to borrowing $75 million from Bank of
Oklahoma's chairman, Ward also collected $67 million from SandRidge by
selling back his personal interests in a controversial corporate perk:
stakes in the company's wells. McClendon, too, had a similar incentive
at Chesapeake.
SandRidge has also paid nearly $28 million more to Ward or firms linked to him or his family, according to SEC filings.
Very, very interesting.
