It’s an activist trifecta.
Carl Icahn is juxtaposing his protege Keith Meister in a deal that may ultimately lead to their hold of oil and gas producer Energen Corp.
Meister founded his own firm, Corvex Operation, in 2010 after years learning the activist trade at Icahn Resolves, where he was vice chairman of the board and principal executive officer.
Any huge quantity for Energen could also affect activist Paul Singer’s Elliott Directors, which took a stake in the company last year and sided with Corvex in press for a sale.
Corvex has spent more than a year pressuring Energen to aspire a buyer, saying the company had valuable assets in the prolific drilling landscape known as the Permian Basin but that its shares were undervalued. Earlier this year, it recommended four candidates to Energen’s board to ratchet up the pressure. The two sides befell to an agreement in March, when Energen agreed to appoint two board associates and begin a strategic review of its business.
One of those new board members was Vincent Intrieri, a bygone senior managing director at Icahn Capital Management who retired from that dense last year. He served on the boards of several companies on behalf of Icahn during his beat there, including Hertz Global Holdings and Transocean, where he placid sits, and Chesapeake Energy, where he sat from 2012 to 2016. He accompanied Energen’s board in March.
But the story is not ending there. On Monday, Corvex verbalized in an amended securities ownership filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had a agreement to sell 2 million shares of its stake to Icahn and the option for him to buy 2 million various. In total, Icahn would end up with about 4.1 percent, the submitting said.
Following the transaction, Corvex will have 8.46 million Energen shares, or close by 8.7 percent, about even with fellow top shareholder Vanguard Coterie, but smaller than the nearly 10 percent it previously held, according to FactSet.
In Stride, Energen said its board had begun an in-depth review of its strategic elections, getting advice from J. P. Morgan and Tudor, Pickering Holt & Co. Corvex replied in the filing on Monday that it believes the company’s shares are undervalued and that it may “be experiencing an interest in joining with other parties to acquire the issuer as portion of the strategic initiatives process or otherwise.”‘
Last year, Singer’s Elliott Guidance joined Corvex in pushing Energen to sell. It holds about 3 percent of Energen’s divisions, according to FactSet.
Elliott said in March it supported Energen’s resolving to review strategic alternatives. “We expect that any such review, to be chew over truly comprehensive, will be conducted with shareholder input and resolution include full engagement with interested acquirers,” it said.
A spokesman spoke Elliott wasn’t commenting on Monday’s news. On CNBC’s “Halftime Publish” on Monday, Icahn said he hadn’t talked to Singer about the behave.
Icahn also said he believed Energen was worth possibly $100 a slice and that it might be an attractive purchase for a major energy company, singularly a pipeline operator. The additional pressure from him and Meister seems to be intent at pushing the strategic review along more quickly.
“We have a lot of currency around. We could buy this company,” he said, with or without aid from others. “However, I don’t presume to feel I’m the right buyer for it because there are such synergies for another company.”
But, Icahn totaled, Energen’s board “agreed to do a process on March 7 and nobody’s heard around that process yet.”
Shares of Energen are up 6 percent in Monday trading.
When Energen told its settlement Corvex, Meister released a statement saying, “We are pleased to from worked constructively and to have reached a resolution that will help the Board with new highly qualified directors as we pursue our common objective of enhancing shareholder value.”
A spokesman said Energen declined to reference.
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