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I can understand the anger and the anguish over situations like this.
As a shareholder in any company I must respect the rights of my creditors to claim what is legally theirs when the debtor (which is technically speaking not just management but all the shareholders too) cannot pay their debts.
Vanguard was mismanaged not once but twice and in a very short period of time. Unforgivable..yes I agree but leading up to that bk there were huge red flags surrounding VNR and they've been there for the past 18 months. The stock went from $20 @ share down to mere pennies in less than 2 years. That alone should tell someone VNR was steaming full speed into another bankruptcy.
Keep analyzing this and it will help if you ever get into another bk stock situation down the road. BK's can rip you a new one if you don't know, or are a bit unsure, of the rules of the game.
Equity holders rarely ever "win" at this.
Marker:
Corelogic Inc (CLGX)
$41.97 down -5.23 (-11.08%)
Volume: 326,258
*2nd qtr 2019 CLGX lost (.07) @ share..down significantly from the same period 2018
No. They exited bankruptcy as a private company.
HOUSTON, July 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Vanguard Natural Resources, Inc. announces that it successfully completed its financial restructuring and emerged from Chapter 11 as a new limited liability company under the name of Grizzly Energy, LLC.
That was then..this is now. The judge can't force Holdco to keep any if its' stores open just to keep employees working.
More detail is needed in this particular store sale. Such as, who will be the purchaser and what do they plan to do with the location. Keep in mind ESL may be selling to an entity it can then turn around and re-negotiate a much better lease agreement with thereby keeping the store open.
Suffice it to say ESL has options that aren't readily apparent on the surface. There is a method to his madness.
Marker:
Corelogic, Inc. (CLGX)
$43.85 down -0.27 (-0.61%)
Volume: 54,798
FD: I do not currently have a position with CLGX..but I do consider it a potential candidate for a short in the coming months.
UPL needs $3mcf minimum to stay alive, however current strip prices indicate that Ultra will probably fall short of realizing $3mcf for at least the next 2 years.
Marker:
Ultra Petroleum Corp (UPL)
0.1982 down -0.0187 (-8.62%)
Volume: 3,767,372
FD: Monitoring only for an unexpected change in nat gas should it happen. I do not own nor plan to own UPL shares at this time. Currently this has all the signs of another nat gas bankruptcy in the making.
Kinda changes what you always thought about the SEC don't it!
I sold the last of my stake last fall.. but I've continued to keep up with the UDF saga because its such a maddening oddity, peculiarity, abnormality, irregularity, inconsist, beyond frustrating, deviation, aberration, quirk, freak, exception, departure, baffling, divergence, variation, pariah - pick one!
Evidently Hollis Greenlaw does what Hollis Greenlaw wants to do...prove me wrong!
I really don't understand his game here but whatever it is it stopped being fun not long after the verdict in the SEC investigation called it a tie, drew a blank, put up zeros, waffled, abstained, went awol, threw up their hands, took a hike, punted, folded, evacuated, shrugged their shoulders, went to lunch and didn't come back for almost 4 years, relinquished, abdicated, saw a squirrel, surrendered, got stumped and left the building, waved, yielded, pretended to do something, forgo, went deaf dumb and blind, disavowed, slapped their foreheads, got handcuffed by Hollis, bamboozled - pick one!
I guess we call ghost busters next ":-[
Hey Salty it's been a while...hope all is well.
These O & G bankruptcies (numbering in the hundreds now) have taken a toll on a ton of shareholders the past 3 and a half years ...and not a stinkin' one of them worked out well for the longs. You always get some day traders working the crowd in these bankruptcies early on but that fades when they know new money isn't taking the bait anymore and they sell. Its legal but a dirty way to make a buck imo.
Glad you stopped by to say hello Salty. God bless and take care!
Marker:
First Internet Banco (INBK)
$21.54 up 1.64 (8.24%)
Volume: 105,639
Then again you see stocks like AMZN trade a whopping 4.3M shares daily on average for a whopping $1,909 @ share with ease.
EI told me once that Buffett doesnt like paying the fees higher volumes create.
Low volume = lower fees for the issuer.
Marker:
Texas Pacific Land T (TPL)
782.0 down -17.24 (-2.16%)
Volume: 6,480
I appreciate the encouragement Trueheart..I had a good mentor.
In this particular bankruptcy I completely understand your position.
The dilemma Judge's face in granting bonus/incentives is a difficult one. Typically it has less to do with deciding if its right or wrong judges have to think about the thousands of employees that would lose their jobs if the company came to a complete melt-down due to some of the top execs leaving. If all the top management people jumped ship when a company files for bankruptcy the already distressed company would most likely grind to a halt...especially on the operations side of the business. Somebody has to keep drilling & pumping oil every day in order to keep the business going until better days come. Sometimes these bankruptcies take years to get through.
I don't want to see 8 or 10 thousand employees lose their jobs and neither do the judges who have to decide these matters.
Its a tough call in some cases. Is this one of those cases? I don't know but in light of this being their 2nd bk in less 2 years I would say the incentive pay was complete bs.
Post #4493 addressed "bonus" pay/incentives in regard to new legislation.
The problem is there are times incentives to stay with the bankrupt company are legit and when it's bs..especially when it involves key operations execs.
Bonus payouts can be easily abused and deciding if its' legit is tricky business. There is no way a bankruptcy judge can know if the reasons given to grant incentive payments are in the best interest of the company trying to successfully emerge from bankruptcy.
People that received incentive pay may be in the top levels of management but that doesn't mean they had anything to do with the financial decisions that lead to a bankruptcy. I'm not saying this is the case here but bad things do happen to good managers. Making hard and fast rules regarding incentive pay in a bankruptcy is a double edge sword.
What are they saying the "opt out" form is for? Is it some type of third-party non-debtor release?? Just curious.
6 year lows will do that. This may have prematurely already hit its best days in late 2016.??
Marker:
Trinity Place Holdin (TPHS)
4.11 up 0.06 (1.48%)
Volume: 164,857
I'm not defending VNR management on any level. I can understand their first filing in 2017. Anyone who follows worldwide O & G knows what caused the first filing but filing again less than 2 years later is not acceptable. Heads needed to roll..and maybe some did or soon will.
Marker:
Vanguard Natural Res (VNRRQ)
0.011 down -0.0027 (-19.71%)
Volume: 21,565
Executive bonuses or retention pay with target incentives involving companies in (or about to enter) bankruptcy is quite common.
You may not have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal which would allow you to read the entire article I'm posting here but you can at least view an opening statement the WSJ did on this subject re: executive bonuses and or retention pay involving companies in a bankruptcy. Immediately after the first paragraph you will see a 4 minute video you can click on. Give it a listen.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903703604576584480750545602
As a side note Congress did pass a bill HR 6912
More Information
In-Depth: Rep. John Duncan (R-TN) introduced this bill to prevent companies in Chapter 11 bankruptcy from paying bonuses to highly compensated employees, such as executives, and insiders.
In recent years, corporations have come under fire for paying bonuses out to executives while going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Hostess Brands, Sports Authority, Toys 'R' Us, Radio Shack, iHeartMedia, and Borders are among the companies that have been criticized for paying their executives sizable bonuses even as their employees lose their jobs. Writing about Toys ‘R’ Us CEO David Brandon’s $2.8 million retention bonus just before his company’s Chapter 11 filing, Axios’ Dan Primack commented on the inequality between Brandon’s bonus and those of the company’s employees:
“Brandon could receive nearly $15 million that is related to a bankruptcy that it was his job to prevent from happening in the first place. Other senior execs could get over $1 million a piece. The other 3,805 employees get to share from what would be a $60 million pot, per court approval, which works out to less than $16,000 per head. Guess which group will be manning cash registers at 5pm on Thanksgiving Day, and which will be home with their families?”
Defending its executive bonuses during Chapter 11 proceedings, Hostess argued that its “prime goal now is to maximize the value of the company as it goes through liquidation,” and argued that executives’ bonuses, which were linked to their achievement of certain benchmarks for rapid disposal of the company’s assets, were needed to incentivize speedy, effective work. The company argued that the rapid disposal of Hostess’ assets was “ultimately to the benefit of all the people and the organizations to whom Hostess owes money,” including employees.
Richard Levin, a partner at the law firm Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, adds that companies in bankruptcy "need to attract the best people and compensate them for the tough work they have to perform," and finding a replacement can be expensive. For executives, the work is especially tough, as they work two difficult jobs: running the troubled business and attending to all the legal and procedural headaches associated with Chapter 11 court proceedings.
Some research also suggests that key employee retention plan (KERP) bonuses paid out to senior employees of companies in bankruptcy restructuring improve companies’ outcomes coming out of bankruptcy. In a study of 417 public companies that filed for bankruptcy from 1996-2007, Queens School of Business professor Wei Wang and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Vidhan Goyal found that firms with KERPs in place moved through restructuring faster and were more likely to be successful after emerging from Chapter 11. Additionally, they found that 78% of incentive bonuses were paid out contingent on bankruptcy resolution, and almost half allowed for bonuses contingent upon the firm’s emergence from Chapter 11 — in other words, they were closely tied to performance. Finally, they found that the total cost of these plans was quite low in the grand scheme of things. Wang pointed out:
“One thing I found surprising was that the total cost devoted to these plans in the 417 companies studied was less than 1 percent of the firms’ pre-bankruptcy petition assets. So why are people so skeptical about these plans? If you think of legal fees, lawyers account for eight to 10 percent of assets, but people don’t argue about legal fees.”
However, in past Chapter 11 cases, the Justice Department’s US Trustee Program, a watchdog agency meant to protect the bankruptcy system’s integrity, has argued that many “incentive programs” like Hostess’ function as “disguised retention program[s],” which are “prohibited in bankruptcy cases absent extremely specific and unusual circumstances.”
Of Note: From 1993 to 2012, 38% of the top 500 most highly-paid CEOs headed poorly performing companies — and 22% of the top 500 CEOs’ firms either ceased to exist or received taxpayer bailouts after the 2008 financial crash.
There is a 2005 measure, fueled by popular outrage over money paid to Enron executives after that company’s implosion, that restricts “retention” bonuses that reward executives for sticking with distressed companies. However, it’s rarely enforced, and companies usually manage to justify executive pay.
Here is another good read involving the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy:
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/10/how-companies-toys-r-us-get-approval-pay-executive-bonuses-during-bankruptcy/
Of course you are entitled to your opinion. I respect your thoughts. It's prudent to have post mortem discussions especially when it involves a bankruptcy. You don't want to step on this rake again if you can help it! This is the time to let go of some idealistic thoughts, myths and hype and replace it with a little more reality.
In an ideal perfect world you are correct managemnent has fiduciary responsibity to do all that they can to preserve and even enhance shareholder value but we don't live in an ideal world. As they say sh*t happens. Only God himself could make the kinds of guarantees your asking for. If a company like VNR could guarantee positive returns, or at minimum maintain value, we couldnt afford to buy it..shares would cost in the tens of thousands each.
World geopolitical events alter the price of energy and things can go south in a heartbeat. The smartest minds in the business get caught with their pants down all the time. Nobody can predict where the price of energy in all its' forms will go with any high degree of accuracy.
Its risk vs reward every time you get out of bed...and on Wall St that goes double.
Unless you purchased your shares in the orginal IPO or some secondary offering, which is highly highly unlikely, the company in whom you are investing in never sees one red cent of your investment.
When you (and others here) purchased your shares you bought them on the "open market" from Joe Blow. That transaction was in no way related to or involving Vanguard Natural Resources. Joe Blow got your money. And if you were to sell your shares right now it will be some other Joe Blow doing the buying. Your broker is simply the "match-maker" if you will.
Its a widely held fallacy on ihub that when you buy shares you are buying them from the company itself.
Make sense?
I understand the frustration when facing certain loss in a bankruptcy. I get it but think about what you're saying here. By the time a company like VNR reaches the point they must file bankruptcy be assured they have completely exhausted every possible source of funding to get them through hard times. They have worn out their welcome with every option.
Even if they sold shares in some kind of secondary offering who would buy them? Large investors won't buy a stock for $5 they could buy for less than two cents on Wall St.
VNR's debt load needed $80 oil to service the debt. The only option left was bankruptcy.
No.
That has nothing to do with it.
Psst! There are 53 million reasons why Eddie Lampert had to abandon his equity stake.
Ever hear of "conflict of interests"? Do you know what that is and why it matters??
Should this POR be confirmed, as is most likely to happen, equity interests are to be cancelled. However, this does not mean I'm telling anyone to buy, sell or hold.
Not that I can see. They adjourned the hearing on the Disclosure Statement until June 5, 2019, at 1:45 p.m.
Stocks involved in a bankruptcy like this wherein the POR calls for cancellation will trade until the stock is deregistered and removed by the SEC and that won't happen until the POR gets voted on and confirmed.
Some traders call stocks that fall into this catagory as "zombie" stocks..or the walking dead. It's crazy but I've seen a few zombie stocks trade for months, or even years, after the case closed. And they will until the SEC physically removes the ticker. In recent years the SEC has been quicker to remove tickers once confirmation happens.
The Craftsman licensing rights were part of the $5.2 billion dollar takeover by Eddie Lampert.
Stanley (who also owns Black & Decker) paid about $900 million for the craftsman brand in March 2017, while giving Sears what it called a "limited" license to sell some Craftsman products.
A few months back Stanley sued Eddies' new Sears over what it called a breach of contract. The case is Stanley Black & Decker Inc v Transform Holdco LLC, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 19-02081.
Quarterly Report (10-q)
Date : 05/16/2019 @ 5:24PM
Source : Edgar (US Regulatory)
Stock : Blue Dolphin Energy Co. (QX) (BDCO)
Quote : $1.09 -0.01 (-0.91%) @ 4:04PM
[....]
· Consecutive Quarterly Net Losses and Working Capital Deficits
- Despite consecutive quarterly net losses during 2018, we reported net income of $0.7 million, or income of $0.07 per share, for the three months ended March 31, 2019. Comparatively, we reported a net loss of ($0.2 million), or a loss of ($0.01) per share, for the three months ended March 31, 2018.
[....]
Source:
http://ih.advfn.com/stock-market/USOTC/blue-dolphin-energy-co-qx-BDCO/stock-news/79938515/quarterly-report-10-q
*Much better than expected earnings.
Marker:
SVB Financial Grp. (SIVB)
227.975 down -8.365 (-3.54%)
Volume: 139,036
Marker:
Blue Dolphin Energy (BDCO)
1.09 up 0.03 (2.83%)
Volume: 475
Thanx for the play by play action from the courtroom JH.
I'm certain you feel the same that reassurances from the lawyers re: UDF's 4 year interactions with the SEC are appreciable..sure.. but only to an extent. It rings hollow with no financials to back either side up.
My trust in the SEC remains dubious ":-\
Marker:
United Development F (UDFI)
5.0 up 0.15 (3.09%)
Volume: 27,501
I apprciate the encouragement $$ITS ONLY MONEY$$.
Rule #1) Corporate bankruptcy is all about the creditors and their legal rights.
Rule #2) See rule #1.
Ok..for those who remain confused.
Re: NOTICE OF DEADLINES FOR THE FILING OF PROOFS OF CLAIMS, INCLUDING REQUESTS FOR PAYMENT
· Beginning on Page 4 of that document you will find Section III - PARTIES WHO DO NOT NEED TO FILE PROOFS OF CLAIM
· Next go to page 5, and under line item 'K' they spell out very clearly who does NOT need to file a claim - any entity holding an equity interest in any Debtor.
Source:
https://reorgdocumentlibrary.broadridge.com/Client/Client?data=0519/N33443/91828V/c
*equity claims come into play if and when the company is being liquidated, which at this point is not happening in this VNR case.
Marker:
Vanguard Natural Res (VNRRQ)
0.017 up 0.000475 (2.87%)
Volume: 189,975
Unless you hold debt against the company..the answer is no.
Claims are for creditors and vendors.
It's long overdue for one of our awol mods to take down those meaningless sticky notes...and replace it with a link to the court docs...then resign the mod position.
I see merit and solid qualities in both candidates actually.
Proxy wars always seem to bring out the drama queens with exaggerated allegations of mismanagement and fraud being bandied about.
TPL is a unique situation with a long history that will never be repeated. If the trust was struggling and losing money I would expect dissident interventions but its not...in fact its quite the opposite.
A better understanding of what's been happening with the Oil & Gas industry should be noted here.
· A whopping 167 oil & gas companies have filed bankruptcy in just the last 3 years.
· Of those 167 15% of them had to file again (unofficially known as a "chapter 22" bankruptcy).
There will be more ch 22's especially among company's that have a large percentage of their properties in NatGas.
VNR's "ch 22" filing has been a near certainty ever since they emerged from bk in 2017. A 2 year glance at the daily pps alone should have told anyone wanting to get in this the restructuring in 2017 was woefully inadequate. VNR fell from over $20 @ share to .20 cents in under 2 years....a rock doesn't fall out of the sky that fast!
Marker:
Vanguard Natural Res (VNRRQ)
0.017 down -0.00. (-5.56%)
Volume: 101,012