Putting a long story short, the board of directors of Cheasapeake Energy, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it was worth $12.1 million of its corporate assets to purchase antique maps from its CEO.
The only thing you can do when you see such a waste of corporate resources is selling your shares if you own them, and not buying them if you don’t.
I should take this opportunity to point out it was exactly the same company and its CEO that in November 2008 faced a margin call on his own stock, forcing him to liquidate 5.4% of the company in a very rapid transaction.
I said the following back in November 2008:
Some might think this would represent the best buying opportunity – cashing in on the misfortune of somebody’s financial errors. Unfortunately in the case of Chesapeake, the last company I would want to invest in would have a CEO that got caught by a massive forced liquidation like this one – first of all, his incentive to perform well has just disappeared (having no more equity stake in the company) and secondly, one would wonder whether he’d make a similar miscalculation with the company’s finances.
It appears that the CEO is just as reckless with the company’s finances as he is with his own – any prudent investor should blackball the entire Board of Directors of Chesapeake Energy – if any of them serve on a corporate board (or heaven forbid, management) of a company you are invested in, it would be a yellow flag.
This is why the iceberg theory of bad news is applicable – if there is a small piece of bad news, chances are there is a lot more to go with it. In the case of Chesapeake, this is the last energy company I would want my dollars invested in.