Williams

It’s always drama with Williams. Nearly half of the Williams board (6 of 14 board members) were part of a cabal that tried to force the company to sell itself to Energy Transfer Equity–a deal that went horribly wrong. Following the aborted merger, six of Williams’ board members tried to engineer a palace coup to depose current CEO Alan Armstrong. The coup failed and the board members quit in July (see Half of Williams Board, Including 2 Corporate Raiders, Quit). One of the board members who quit was corporate raider Keith Mesiter, founder and managing partner of Corvex Management. Meister is a protege of Carl Ichan, hence we call him Mini-Me. After quitting, he decided he wanted back on the board and began a proxy fight to take control of the company (see Corvex Raider Launches Hostile Takeover Attempt of Williams). Williams appointed several new board members, the most recent two earlier this week (see More Board Shakeups Coming to Williams). Now, all of a sudden, Mini-Me has given up. Meister says he likes the most recent appointments and is using that as an excuse to drop his proxy fight to take over the company. What a loser…
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Williams continues to face challenges with its board of directors–the people hired to oversee the company and the path it will chart into the future. Nearly half of the Williams board (6 of 14 board members) were part of a cabal that tried to force the company to sell itself to Energy Transfer Equity–a deal that went horribly wrong. Following the aborted merger, six of Williams’ board members tried to engineer a palace coup to depose current CEO Alan Armstrong. The coup failed and the board members quit in July (see Half of Williams Board, Including 2 Corporate Raiders, Quit). In August, Williams appointed three new members of the board, all of them well-qualified (see Williams Appoints 3 New Board Members, Confounds Corp Raider). Williams is continuing with what it calls its “Board refreshment plan.” The latest: the company has just appointed two more new board members, effective immediately. Williams also announced that three current board members who were on the board prior to the big shake-up (three who didn’t quit in July) will be gone by the next annual meeting on Nov. 23. Here’s the latest in our ongoing soap opera, As the (Midstream) World Turns…
Read More “More Board Shakeups Coming to Williams”

In August, Williams announced a deal to sell its Canadian businesses and assets to Inter Pipeline for $1 billion (see Bold Move – Williams Selling Canadian Assets for $1B). Williams CEO Alan Armstrong has been under extreme pressure to step down following the aborted attempt by Energy Transfer Equity to buy his company. Armstrong wants to stick around and selling off the Canadian assets was his first big, bold move since the palace coup against him failed. Armstrong says the Canadian asset sale will help fund major capital projects in the second half of 2016. Good news: the deal is now done and Williams is $1B richer…
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If you’ve read MDN for any length of time, you already know of the ongoing soap opera of corporate raiders attempting to pressure Williams, a huge pipeline company in the northeast (and in the rest of the country) into selling itself to Energy Transfer Equity–a deal that fell apart in June (see Dead as a Doornail: ETE Terminates Merger with Williams). You also know that one of the corporate raiders (Carl Icahn protege) Keith “Mini-Me” Meister tried to force Williams CEO Alan Armstrong to resign, and when that didn’t happen, Meister and five others quit the board of directors in a huff (see Half of Williams Board, Including 2 Corporate Raiders, Quit). The raiders’ sole purpose in forcing Armstrong out is to force a new sale to a different company, Enterprise Products Partners (see Here We Go Again: Enterprise Products Wants to Buy Williams). Williams isn’t having it and announced earlier this month they were on the hunt to replace three of the six losers who quit the board with bona fide/qualified/independent board members (see Williams to Appoint 3 New Board Members, Replace Raiders Who Quit). Last week Mini-Me Meister launched a proxy war to elect himself and nine other of his lackeys to the Williams board (see Corvex Raider Launches Hostile Takeover Attempt of Williams). Good news: Williams has confounded Meister by naming three new board members. Each of them comes with stellar qualifications to help guide the company into the future WITHOUT selling itself to line the pockets of corporate raiders…
Read More “Williams Appoints 3 New Board Members, Confounds Corp Raider”

Once upon a time, before Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) made an indecent proposal to Williams to buy them out (see Energy Transfer Makes “Indecent Proposal” to Buy Williams for $48B), a deal that eventually fell apart, Williams the stockholding corporate mother ship had planned to buy out all of the “units” in subsidiary Williams Partners, a master limited partnership (MLP). But when ETE insisted on buying Williams, that ended the program of Williams (stock ticker WMB) from buying out Williams Partners (stock ticker WPZ). However, on Friday WMB announced it will purchase 6.975 million units (the equivalent of shares of stock in an MLP) for $250 million. Is this the revival of Williams’ original plan to merge what is now two entities on paper into one?…
Read More “Williams (WMB) Investing $250M in Williams Partners (WPZ)”