New language in Tom Ward’s employment contract gives the SandRidge CEO “wide latitude” to profit personally from oil and natural gas deals, which could pose conflicts of interest, a new Reuters investigation shows. SandRidge changed Ward’s employment agreement in 2011, lifting “most restrictions” on the CEO’s ability to sell mineral rights or drill wells, the [...]
Together as company president and CEO, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon built Chesapeake Energy into the second-largest natural gas producer in the U.S. And while each have very different personalities, Ward may have borrowed some of the same “idiosyncratic business practices” when he left Chesapeake in 2006 to found SandRidge Energy, according to a new [...]
A top SandRidge investor wants the Oklahoma City energy company to consider selling itself and is calling for CEO Tom Ward to step down. TPG-Axon Capital, an investment firm that owns 4.5 percent of SandRidge’s stock, went after the company’s board of directors in a letter by the firm’s founder Dinakar Singh, reports the Journal [...]
Oklahoma is enjoying an oil and gas boom. But drilling rigs and other petroleum exploration and production equipment are power-hungry machines, and rural parts of the state are having a hard time meeting the electricity demand. The problem is particularly bad in northern Oklahoma’s Mississippi Lime formation, The Journal Record‘s Sarah Terry-Cobo reports: But while [...]
Low prices, warm weather and abundant production are forcing natural gas companies to refocus on oil. This is an important shift for Oklahoma, an epicenter of the natural gas industry. The Oklahoman ran a great profile of how Oklahoma natural gas companies are trying to reinvent themselves as oil outfits. In many ways, natural gas [...]
Aubrey McClendon’s latest employment contract gave the CEO permission to do what he was already doing: trading commodities for himself, Joshua Schneyer and Jeanine Prezioso with Reuters report. Giving the CEO explicit license to play the markets represented an extraordinary incentive that enhanced one of corporate America’s most generous compensation plans and reinforced the unique [...]
In a letter that criticized management and the board, Chesapeake Energy’s largest shareholder on Monday urged the company to be open to buyout offers. Southeastern Asset Management, which owns more than 13 percent of the company’s outstanding stock, highlighted its worries: We urge the company to take action in three areas: debt targets, management focus, [...]
More than 20 nonprofit organizations assembled Friday to show their support for Chesapeake Energy and CEO Aubrey McClendon. The press conference was billed as an impromptu event and was not organized by Chesapeake. But, despite weeks of bad headlines for McClendon and the Oklahoma City natural gas giant, nonprofit leaders said they aren’t worried about [...]
Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon opened Wednesday’s first-quarter earnings call with an apology for “distractions” caused by questions into his personal loans. McClendon secured those loans — up to $1.1 billion, Reuters reported — with well stakes, which he acquired through a controversial CEO perk that allowed him a personal stake in every well Chesapeake [...]
For at least four years, Chesapeake Energy’s CEO had a side business. From 2004-2008, Aubrey McClendon ran a $200 million private hedge fund the founded with Chesapeake co-founder Tom Ward, now CEO of SandRidge Energy, Reuters reports. Here’s the rub: the hedge fund traded commodities Chesapeake produces. “If correct, these disclosures would be even more [...]
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