raise 1bn?
Sigh. Some people got the skills. Me? I have trouble raising 20 bucks.
raise 1bn?
Sigh. Some people got the skills. Me? I have trouble raising 20 bucks.
McClendon looking to get $1B to fund new company: FT - Energy Ticker - MarketWatch
June 6, 2013, 11:15 AM
By Claudia Assis
He’s baaack: Aubrey McClendon, the, ahem, colorful former Chesapeake Energy chief executive, is trying to raise $1 billion from private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds for his new company, according to an article in the Financial Times.
McClendon founded American Energy Partners after being forced to retire from Chesapeake, a company he co-founded in the 1989. The Financial Times said it was not yet clear if he had found anyone willing to give him money.
The article, citing unnamed people familiar with his plans, went on to say McClendon could take advantage of low interest rates and tap markets to fund AEP.
AEP has been hiring for some time on its website, asking for “the best and the brightest” to join the company. Candidates should be “excited about ground floor involvement with an accomplished industry leader.”
McClendon left Chesapeake under a cloud of criticism and accusations he profited from transactions involving company assets. An internal investigation found no wrongdoing, but McClendon “agreed to retire,” as the company put it, on April 1.
McClendon was allowed to have a 2.5% stake in each well Chesapeake drilled, and he retains such holdings.
His non-compete agreement with Chesapeake ends June 2017, but “that will not necessarily stop him doing deals in the same areas in which Chesapeake operates,” the Financial Times said.
The former CEO has also kept busy setting up other companies, including a family office — private companies the wealthy set up to manage their financial affairs — called Arcadia Capital LLC and McClendon Energy Partners.
Energy Deal Maker Eyes Big Slice of Pie - WSJ.com
From the lead...
During more than two decades as chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp., CHK +1.50% Aubrey McClendon received generous pay packages and freely invested the company's money to build a natural-gas powerhouse.
Now that he is pitching Wall Street on his new energy company, Mr. McClendon is asking for a lot of money, an unusually large slice of profits and a high degree of control over his business.
It isn't clear he will get what he wants this time.
In April, after setting up shop in a six-story Oklahoma City building and conducting informal meetings with prospective backers, Mr. McClendon, 53 years old, sent a six-page letter to about a dozen private-equity firms.
The letter said that Mr. McClendon wants to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion of "initial equity capital" for his new exploration-and-production company, American Energy Partners LP.
Mr. McClendon and his team want to keep a large cut of any profits of the new business—half of all earnings after a certain investment-return threshold is met, according to the letter—and he expects to maintain more control than usual in these kinds of deals, the letter said.
Wants more control and more of the profits..? Couple that with his reputation of handling others people money and Im not sure we will see investors lining up anytime soon.
I think you might be surprised how much he raises and how fast he gets this done.
Private equity money comes with fewer hoops and regulations than institutional money, and isn't subject to the same disclosure rules.
Hopefully Aubrey will have the good sense to keep his new company private. He's not cut out for running a publicly traded corporation.
Lots of people are great entrepreneurs and not necessarily skilled at handling huge public companies as a CEO.
I think Aubrey is of that sort and he probably didn't even realize it until recently.
It will be very interesting to see what happens with Tom Ward, as he is almost certain to be turned out of SandRidge by the end of this month.
I bet the two of them will at least collaborate and you can also bet Ward will be back making deals himself if in fact SD sends him packing.
I think it will be a few very large investors and not the kind of public company Chesapeake had become. There are all kinds of families and individuals out there with considerable cash to whom $250 million or more is not a big deal. Think people like Boone. Techies, oilies, international investors......
Investor interest sounds pretty tepid at the moment.
Aubrey McClendon, of Chesapeake, Is Asking for a Lot in American Energy Partners Pitch - WSJ.com
I said it would be sooner than people think....but I didn't say by tomorrow.
While everyone was bemoaning the non-compete and crying "whatever will Aubrey do now", I predicted he would immediately get back in the game. Guess I was right. Bet I am right on this too. AM will not let too much time pass and he has BIG dreams.
Who said that Aubrey was going to be sitting around with nothing to do?
The numbers it will take to quench his thirst will require that he goes public.
Boulder's right.
The only real question I have is will his company be closer to a $10B company or a $5B company by 2018. I lean toward the former.
BTW, I wonder about Aubrey's real estate development plans.
We all know he has a great passion in this area and that he has assembled tons of acreage in the East Edmond / Arcadia / Jones area.
But beyond that, I wonder if he would be interested in buying NH Plaza or the land CHK owns on the OK River next to the airpark?
He was the one with all the grandiose development plans and now that Chesapeake wants to shed extraneous properties, maybe he'll put his own money into these ventures.
Yes, and it also has to be said that he would be a very funny situation, wouldn't he?
He would have to pay them at least what they have into these properties -- which is way, way over market -- or admit that he exercised very poor judgment in the spending of shareholder money.
He overpaid for non-CHK real estate using OPM, never disclosed his plans, dragged his feet on developing properties, took too long during construction, and then had to buy the tenants.
If a young real estate developer did this with a bank's money he'd be foreclosed upon and run out of the industry.
There will soon be a sign on the Harvey Parkway Building for "American Energy Partners", which is Aubrey's company.
Sign permit this week. May already be going up.
They are now leasing about a third of that building.
I'm not betting against him.
I wish I could invest a few thousand and cash in on a million or so in a couple of years.
Unfortunately, he wipes with similar sizes of money as my cash investment, so I'm sure he wouldn't even look at it. :P
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