DHT Maritime Inc. is the operating company that owns and leases out a fleet of oil tankers -- the name letters "DHT" originally stood for "double hull tankers," but since at least 2005 they haven't properly stood for anything -- the letters are simply the name.
Anyway, on March 1 of this year, DHT Maritime completed transactions that made it a subsidiary of a holding company, appropriately called DHT Holdings, organized in the Marshall Islands.
Still more recently, DHT Holdings has been engaged in a proxy dispute with MMI Investments, a New York based hedge fund we've encountered before in this blog. It's DHT's largest shareholder, currently owning 9.7% of DHT Holdings' equity.
On Friday, May 14, MMI and DHT have reached an agreement. Here's the filing. The gist of it is that DHT Holdings will expand the size of its board of directors to include MMI's nominee, Robert Cowen.
One of the issues involved in the proxy fight was the question of paying dividends and/or starting a share buyback. Previously, DHT's chairman has said that the company "will certainly consider reinstating the dividend" or starting a share-buyback in the future, but conditions in its industry do not allow for that just now. There's nothing explicit on the dividend/buy-back issues in the peace treaty.
Showing posts with label stock buy-backs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stock buy-backs. Show all posts
Monday, May 17, 2010
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Shake-up at Deutsche Borse
Kurt Viermetz has resigned as chairman of the board of Deutsche Boerse AG, effective December 8.
Deutsche Borse owns the Frankfurt stock exchange, Clearstream (a settlement operation), Eurex (the dominant force in European equity derivatives), and Eurex Clearing.
Viermetz has been its chairman for just three years, and although it isn't clear just what happened behind the scenes leading to his departure, the folks who put him there seem to have lost faith in him.
The hedge funds Atticus Capital and TCI were instrumental in Viermetz' rise to the chairmanship three years ago. The best guess at this point is that they expected him to initiate a buyback of the company's equity by this point. He has resisted doing so, and now he's out.
Atticus reacted quickly to the news: "Atticus is pleased by Mr. Viermetz's decision to resign from the supervisory board of Deutsche Boerse AG, which we believe is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders," it said in a statement this weekend. "We wish to recognize and thank Mr. Viermetz for his years of service on the supervisory board."
To those of us who don't happen to own DB stock, the issue of whether the company is to initiate a buyback may seem a rather trivial one. An operational issue is also under discussion there, though: whether the company should spin off some of its units.
From the point of view of the stock or derivatives investing publics, is it better to deal through an exchange that is separate from the clearing/settlement operation, or with a single integrated company that performs both functions? Should we be hoping that whatever shake-up underway at DB results in a break-up?
Deutsche Borse owns the Frankfurt stock exchange, Clearstream (a settlement operation), Eurex (the dominant force in European equity derivatives), and Eurex Clearing.
Viermetz has been its chairman for just three years, and although it isn't clear just what happened behind the scenes leading to his departure, the folks who put him there seem to have lost faith in him.
The hedge funds Atticus Capital and TCI were instrumental in Viermetz' rise to the chairmanship three years ago. The best guess at this point is that they expected him to initiate a buyback of the company's equity by this point. He has resisted doing so, and now he's out.
Atticus reacted quickly to the news: "Atticus is pleased by Mr. Viermetz's decision to resign from the supervisory board of Deutsche Boerse AG, which we believe is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders," it said in a statement this weekend. "We wish to recognize and thank Mr. Viermetz for his years of service on the supervisory board."
To those of us who don't happen to own DB stock, the issue of whether the company is to initiate a buyback may seem a rather trivial one. An operational issue is also under discussion there, though: whether the company should spin off some of its units.
From the point of view of the stock or derivatives investing publics, is it better to deal through an exchange that is separate from the clearing/settlement operation, or with a single integrated company that performs both functions? Should we be hoping that whatever shake-up underway at DB results in a break-up?
Monday, March 10, 2008
The credit squeeze
There's quite a perceptive Lex column in today's Financial Times.
The item that especially caught my attention concerned activist investors and the effects of the present credit squeeze on their strategies.
The columnist means by "activist investors" not the folks who are interested in, say, a businesses' carbon footprint or whether it does business with Burma. He means the investment funds that seek to make a profit off of pressing managements for changes -- telling the managers, sometimes through the mechanism of an actual or threatened proxy fight, that they should merge with somebody, or sell off non-core subsidiaries, or initiate a stock buy-back program, etc.
This has become a more difficult way of making money than it used to be. The reason? In order to do this, you have to start off with a substantial chunk of a company's stock, and you (the activist) would generally acquire that chunk with borrowed money. Obviously, as money gets harder to borrow in relevant quantities this gets more complicated.
But that's not the worst of it. For as credit gets tight, its harder to make the case for dividend pay-outs or stock buy-backs. Management push-back against such proposals will be more vigorous.
The spin-off of non-core assets gets more difficult, too. Spin them off to whom? Who is buying these days?
"Many activist funds" the FT tells us, "may be in for a long, hard slog."
The item that especially caught my attention concerned activist investors and the effects of the present credit squeeze on their strategies.
The columnist means by "activist investors" not the folks who are interested in, say, a businesses' carbon footprint or whether it does business with Burma. He means the investment funds that seek to make a profit off of pressing managements for changes -- telling the managers, sometimes through the mechanism of an actual or threatened proxy fight, that they should merge with somebody, or sell off non-core subsidiaries, or initiate a stock buy-back program, etc.
This has become a more difficult way of making money than it used to be. The reason? In order to do this, you have to start off with a substantial chunk of a company's stock, and you (the activist) would generally acquire that chunk with borrowed money. Obviously, as money gets harder to borrow in relevant quantities this gets more complicated.
But that's not the worst of it. For as credit gets tight, its harder to make the case for dividend pay-outs or stock buy-backs. Management push-back against such proposals will be more vigorous.
The spin-off of non-core assets gets more difficult, too. Spin them off to whom? Who is buying these days?
"Many activist funds" the FT tells us, "may be in for a long, hard slog."
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