SandRidge investor eyes sale, CEO ouster
Hedge fund TPG-Axon, which said it owns more than 4.5 percent of SandRidge and has about $4 billion in assets under management, on Thursday sent the company a letter that also urges a shakeup of the U.S. oil and gas company's board.
The hedge fund repeatedly compared SandRidge to Chesapeake Energy Corp, which has been besieged by a governance crisis and liquidity crunch. Ward co-founded Chesapeake with Aubrey McClendon in 1989. Ward joined SandRidge in 2006 and took the company public the following year.
TPG-Axon said in the letter it believes SandRidge could be worth $12 to $14 per share, compared with its $6 closing price on Wednesday.
SandRidge shares closed 1.7 percent higher at $6.10 on Thursday. The company's current market value is around $3.2 billion.
SandRidge stock performance has been nothing short of disastrous, on both an absolute and relative basis, since the company's IPO in 2007, TPG-Axon founder Dinakar Singh wrote in a letter to the SandRidge board.
The shares have lost more than three-quarters of their value compared with their IPO price of $26. That compares with a 4 percent drop in the Dow Jones index of U.S. oil companies.
Singh pointed to what he called appalling corporate governance and reckless spending that has resulted in repeated financial emergencies, and caused massive dilution, soaring cost of capital,
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