Mission Advisors 14a-6(g)

In the proxy statement he makes one of his old nonsensical ideas yet again. He wants to fully explore converting the Trust into a Delaware Corporation. He fails to outline even one reason why the corporation would make more sense than the current structure. Not one.

General Cook Expanding Twitter’s Revenues for Q2

Your responsibility is to the corporation and not to outside interests.

When did TPL incorporate?  Did I miss a filing?

White Card 14A with Horizon Kinetics Update to Investors

Texas Pacific Land Trust, a major – sometimes the major – holding in a number of our strategies, is now the subject of a proxy contest between the two trustees who control its activities and an investment group. A shareholder voting period will end with the Special Meeting  that is scheduled to be held on May 22, 2019. The trustees have put forth a candidate to replace the late Maurice Meyer III, who retired in February due to ill health. The investment group has proposed a different person to be the third trustee. Both assert that their candidate would best serve the interests of the Trust.

Central to the proxy contest is that the Trust is as unique in its governance structure as it is in its asset inheritance. The assets are probably unmatched in the scope of their royalty interests, surface acreage and water rights in the oil and gas rich Permian basin of west Texas. The Permian Basin is unmatched in the U.S. for the extent of its reserves, now second in the world only to Saudi Arabia. It is no exaggeration to say that the Permian Basin has enhanced the global geo-political economic position of the U.S.

As to governance, there is probably no other SEC-registered, publicly traded company with trustees or directors who are tenured for life.  One can see why it is especially strongly felt by both parties that the choice of this third trustee is most important.

In almost all such cases, the contesting parties are referred to as an outside investor group, and I have here chosen to exclude that term. This is because this particular group holds over 25% of the shares, is TPL’s largest shareholder group by far, and has held the shares for many, many years. In this sense, they might be said to embody the ideal of a long-term equity stake holder, which is, in its essence, the counterpoint to an outsider. The trustees, in contrast, hold a negligible amount of shares.