Without Our Cooperation

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5/8 Update from White Card

Lots going on in this one. White reacts to the vote being postponed and shares a letter from their pals John and Dave (who can’t be bothered to spell Tessler’s first name right).

White still wants to vote on 5/22. Will be interesting to see the HOW here.

On behalf of all shareholders as well as ourselves, we fully reserve the right to move forward with a vote on the election of a new trustee on May 22, 2019, as previously scheduled.

Trustees Barry and Norris write to HK and Tessler (but no Oliver) and show both an olive branch and a middle finger. 

John and I will be both in New York this Friday and we believe we should use the opportunity to meet.

Even if you should be truly unconcerned about all the unanswered questions about Mr. Oliver’s experience and track record, you surely realize that your best case scenario means that you’d end up with only one out of three trustees.  Consequently, even if you’d prevail in the election contest, you could not achieve any of your ultimate goals without our cooperation until another vacancy opens up (and it may be another decade until that happens). 

 

 

9 thoughts on “Without Our Cooperation”

  2. Despite being a long-term holder of shares dating back more than 20 years, I have only started following TPL closely in recent years, and have never been clear on what happened in 2016 when much of the transfer of power in management and trustees took place. Only cursory information was shared in the 2016 annual report and most TPL investors probably had little to no insight into the process:

    The Trustees were saddened that Mr. James K. Norwood passed away on September 27, 2016. Mr. Norwood was a Trustee from June 14, 2006, and the Trust will surely miss him. At a Special Meeting of Holders of Sub-share Certificates of Propriety Interest (“Sub-share Certificates) held on January 12, 2017, the holders of Sub-share Certificates elected Mr. David E. Barry as a Trustee to fill the vacancy created by the death of Mr. Norwood. Mr. Barry graduated fro the College of the Holy Cross in 1966 with a degree in Physics and from Harvard Law School in 1969. He spent his entire legal career at the law firm of Kelley, Drye & Warren LLP until he became a retired partner in 2012. Mr. Barry is now President of of Sidra Real Estate, Inc. and Tarka Resources, Inc.
    Mr. Tyler Glover, formerly serving the Trust as Assistant General Agent was promoted to General Agent. Chief Executive Officer and Secretary, Mr. Robert J. Packer, formerly serving as Chief Financial Officer, was promoted to General Agent and Chief Financial Officer.”

    In hindsight, I think we would have a lot of questions about where Mr. Barry came from and his qualifications, and the governance process that “promoted” Mr. Glover and Mr. Packer. No information provided at all about the circumstances under which General Agent David M. Peterson left his position (which we have since learned from White Card was a situation riddled with all kinds of potential conflict of interest).

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  4. The trustees need to fire their legal advisor. These scorched Earth tactics will not likely work out well for them in the end.

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  5. Brilliant strategy by HK to share this move publicly to expose the duplicity of team blue. Simply amazing to want to meet privately and cut some kind of deal, while making threats that even if Oliver wins, we won’t work with him and just outvote him on everthing.

    Pretty sure from my reading of the trust there is a process to recall trustees. Have not Trustees John and David realized it won’t take ten years to start a process to remove them if they are the obstructionists they threaten to be?

    This dumpster fire can only cause more blue votes to turn white.

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  6. The formatting doesn’t show up in these comments, but Trustees wrote in their email: “While we were pleased to receive the recommendation from ISS yesterday, we understand that this will remain a close election. 1”

    That “1” footer references to this, from Softvest: “1 SoftVest, L.P., Horizon Kinetics LLC and ART-FGT Family Partners disagree with this statement.”

    Between this comment, and Trustees delaying the meeting, is there any question on how the votes are going?

    Shareholders have expressed their views on this issue with their votes — as the Trustees continue to take action that is contrary to the interest of the Trust’s beneficiaries are exposing themselves to liability. I hope that Softvest’s next move is to bring this issue — of having been self-interested trustees — to court.

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  7. Can we talk about their innovative approach to grammatical tenses? “Consequently, even if you’d prevail in the election contest, you could not achieve…”
    Do they mean “even if you did prevail in the election” or “ever if you were to prevail”, or even simply “even if you prevailed”? Everything ‘they’d do’ in this proxy fight is a bungle.

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