Carl

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s second-largest investor Carl Icahn has increased his stake in the Oklahoma City-based operator to 8.98% from 7.6%, according to a regulatory filing by the company. The activist investor earlier this year pushed for governance changes, including replacing Aubrey McClendon as chairman. Icahn was instrumental in shaking up the board of directors and appointed an associate, Vincent J. Intrieri, as one of four new members (see NGI, June 25).

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s second-largest investor Carl Icahn has increased his stake in the Oklahoma City-based operator to 8.98% from 7.6%, according to a regulatory filing by the company. The activist investor earlier this year pushed for governance changes, including replacing Aubrey McClendon as chairman. Icahn was instrumental in shaking up the board of directors and appointed an associate, Vincent J. Intrieri, as one of four new members (see Daily GPI, June 22).

An environmental group opposed to high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) in New York State has launched a campaign asking the top 1,000 contributors to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection effort to pressure him to ban the practice.

Officials in the Town — not the City — of Rochester, NY, are considering a ban on natural gas extraction.

Ahead of the annual shareholder meeting on Friday, Chesapeake Energy Corp. acquiesced to demands of major shareholder groups and Carl Icahn, who now holds 7.8% of the stock, and said four existing independent directors would resign from the board. The company also has put up for sale 337,481 net acres in its prized Utica/Point Pleasant Shale, which would give it less than one million acres in the play.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s shareholders gave a modest thumb’s up Tuesday to the news that Carl Icahn is now the company’s third largest shareholder, and another large shareholder group urged a board shake-up to extract value.

With time running out on billionaire Carl Icahn’s tender offer of $5.50/share, or $665 million in aggregate, for Dynegy Inc., Seneca Capital on Wednesday again urged Dynegy shareholders to reject the offer.

The spotlight on commodity index funds and their impact on markets continues to burn brightly following a scathing report from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), acting ranking minority member. The report claims that commodity index traders, in the aggregate, have made such large purchases on the Chicago wheat futures market that they “have pushed up futures prices, disrupted the normal relationship between futures prices and cash prices for wheat, and caused farmers, grain elevators, grain processors, consumers and others to experience significant unwarranted costs and price risks.”

The spotlight on commodity index funds and their impact on markets continues to burn brightly following a scathing report from Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), acting ranking minority member. The report claims that commodity index traders, in the aggregate, have made such large purchases on the Chicago wheat futures market that they “have pushed up futures prices, disrupted the normal relationship between futures prices and cash prices for wheat, and caused farmers, grain elevators, grain processors, consumers and others to experience significant unwarranted costs and price risks.”