Less than two weeks after SandRidge Energy Inc. succumbed to investors’ wishes to terminate a deal to buy Bonanza Creek Energy Inc., activist investor Carl Icahn is urging the company to make changes on its board and let his firm appoint a new director.
Icahn, the company’s largest shareholder with a 13.5% stake, has called for two of Sandridge’s five board members to resign.
In a letter to SandRidge Chairman John Genova, Icahn asked his firm be permitted to appoint at least one new director and the other opening could be filled by another one of the company’s biggest shareholders. “Your apparent disregard for any semblance of accountability to the owners of SandRidge reminds me of the medieval belief in the divine right of kings,” Icahn said in the letter.
In November, SandRidge SD, +0.05% announced a cash-and-stock deal worth $746 million to buy Bonanza, an exploration-and-production company based in Denver. Investors thought the deal was too expensive.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
By Allison Prang