Dole Food CEO, former top exec ordered to pay $148M
Source: Associated Press
Dole Food CEO, former top exec ordered to pay $148M
Randall Chase, Ap Business Writer
Updated 4:31 pm, Thursday, August 27, 2015
DOVER, Del. (AP) A Delaware judge on Thursday ordered 92-year-old Dole Food CEO David Murdock and a former top lieutenant to pay $148 million in damages for misleading directors and shareholders in a deal that took the company private in 2013.
The judge on Thursday said the billionaire businessman, along with former Dole president and chief operating officer C. Michael Carter, breached their fiduciary duties of loyalty in structuring a $1.2 billion cash buyout that left the fruit-and-vegetable giant in Murdock's hands.
Vice Chancellor Travis Laster noted that a board committee was able to overcome most of the two men's "machinations," negotiating an increase in Murdock's initial $12 per share offer to a deal price of $13.50, which received a narrow 50.9 percent approval from stockholders.
"But what the committee could not overcome, what the stockholder vote could not cleanse, and what even an arguably fair price does not immunize, is fraud," wrote Laster, whose damage award represents an incremental value of $2.74 per share.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Dole-Food-CEO-chief-counsel-ordered-to-pay-148M-6469461.php
Yallow
(1,926 posts)When rich folks do crime, they just write a check.
The rest of us, get ass raped in a dozen different ways, even if we are innocent,
and simply can't afford a good lawyer.
Yallow
(1,926 posts)"The projections Carter provided were knowingly false," Laster wrote in his 106-page opinion. "Carter intentionally tried to mislead the committee for Murdock's benefit."
This is a crime.
As the oligarchs feed on our families, their cronies get off scot free for helping the rip us shareholders off.
And I am sure Obama's pussified Justice Department will look the other way, like they always do.
They only want to prosecute medical marijuana growers it seems.
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)They're not pussified, they're bought.
Scruffy1
(3,256 posts)They have to give back a little of what they steal. It doesn't say how much he kept. Should read "Criminal gets to keep x amount of stolen loot."