Corporate Raider Mini-Me Meister Drops Proxy Fight with 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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