After months of criticism of his compensation plan, Aubrey K. McClendon is retiring as chief executive of Chesapeake Energy on April 1, the company announced on Tuesday. A larger-than-life figure, Mr. McClendon co-founded Chesapeake and built the company through a series of deals that shaped the natural gas industry. “It’s an end of an era,†said Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer.
Mr. McClendon’s departure comes after months of scrutiny and upheaval. Under pressure from shareholders, the company replaced more than half of its directors after news reports said the chief executive had gotten personal loans using stakes in company-owned wells as collateral. The company said the board’s review of Mr. McClendon’s financial dealings “to date has not revealed improper onduct.â€
Investors welcomed the news of Mr. McClendon’s departure, sending shares up more than 10 percent after hours. On Tuesday, Carl C. Icahn, one of the shareholders who had pushed for a revamped board, was generous in his praise. “Aubrey has every right to be proud of the company he has built, the world-class team of people at Chesapeake and the collection of assets he has assembled, which in my opinion are the best portfolio of energy assets in the country,†he said.
Still, Chesapeake faces challenges. The company has struggled as the natural gas boom has faded, losing more than two-thirds of its value over the last few years, Clifford Krauss and Michael J. de la Merced write in DealBook.
MF GLOBAL CUSTOMERS’ HAPPY RESULTS  | Under a proposal that will be reviewed by a bankruptcy court on Thursday, customers of the failed brokerage firm MF Global would receive 93 p! ercent of their missing money. “And the trustee who has submitted the proposal, James W. Giddens, has quietly identified a way that, if sent to the judge and approved, could plug the remaining shortfall for customers in the United States, according to people involved in the case,†DealBook’s Ben Protess reports. “The broad push to make MF Global customers nearly whole, a goal now surprisingly within reach, is a remarkable turnaround from the firm’s 2011 bankruptcy filing when such a recovery seemed impossible.â€
Investigators continue to collect evidence on the firm’s demise. Federal authorities interviewed Jon S. Corzine, a former New Jersey governor who ran MF Global when it collapsed, over two days in September, according to people close to the case, “a sign that the government saw him more as a witness than a suspect,†Mr. Protess writes. “Investigators cotinue to examine one of his statements from the September session, the people close to the case said. The statement involved Mr. Corzine’s recollection about a phone call he had with JPMorgan Chase, which received a suspicious $175 million transfer from MF Global on its last day of business.â€
Mr. Corzine, for his part, is beginning to put the saga behind him. In addition to working on a charitable effort in Central America, Mr. Corzine “was close to cooperating with Richard Ben Cramer, an author and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, on a biography. Mr. Corzine’s lawyers were in the final stages of negotiating with Mr. Cramer this month when the author died from complications of lung cancer.â€
TOP FEDERAL PROSECUTOR TO DEPART  | Lanny A. Breuer, who went after financial wrongdoing as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, is to announce on Wednesday that he is st! epping do! wn after nearly four years, DealBook’s Ben Protess reports. Mr. Breuer’s departure is effective March 1, and it is expected that he will return to private practice. “While he has come under fire for a dearth of prosecutions on Wall Street in response to the crisis, Mr. Breuer also oversaw an aggressive crackdown on money laundering and interest-rate manipulation at some of the world’s biggest banks. In two weeks last month, he joined a nearly $2 billion case against HSBC for money laundering and a $1.5 billion settlement with UBS for rate-rigging. Next week, he is expected to take a similar rate-rigging action against the Royal Bank of Scotland.†In an interview, Mr. Breuer said his work at the agency had been “the highlight of my professional career.â€
ON THE AGENDA  | Research i Motion is to introduce the new BlackBerry at 10 a.m. The Federal Reserve’s policy-making committee issues a statement at 2:15 p.m., at the conclusion of a two-day meeting. Facebook and ConocoPhillips report earnings after the market closes. An estimate of gross domestic product in the fourth quarter is to be released at 8:30 a.m. Greg Rayburn, chief executive of Hostess Brands, is on Bloomberg TV at 8 a.m. Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research in Motion, is on CNBC at 2 p.m.
DRAWING LESSONS FROM A DEAL GONE WRONG  | The legal dispute over the $580 million sale of Dragon Systems to Lernout & Hauspie may offer some lessons for entrepreneurs and others working with investment bankers. The fight between Dragon’s founders and Goldman Sachs, which was resolved ! last week! in Goldman’s favor, centered on whether the investment bank had been negligent with its advice in the all-stock deal, which soured when Lernout’s accounting was exposed as a fraud and the company collapsed. “The biggest lesson may be to know your advisers,†Steven M. Davidoff writes in the Deal Professor column. The role of an investment bank “can be quite narrow,†and it is up to accountants to catch possible fraud. The founders of Dragon “appear to think that their advisers should have saved them from themselves and that they could negotiate a better deal than Goldman Sachs. That was a mistake.â€
Kinder Morgan to Buy Copano Energy fr $3.2 Billion  | Kinder Morgan Energy Partners has agreed to buy the natural gas services company Copano Energy in an all-stock deal worth $3.2 billion. DealBook Â'
Write-Downs From Mining Deals Reach $50 Billion  | Bloomberg News reports: “The world’s biggest mining and steel companies have wiped about $50 billion off project valuations in the past year and the purge is poised to continue this earnings season as managers reassess expensive takeovers.†BLOOMBERG NEWS
Hostess Said to Pick Apollo and Metropoulos as Lead Bidder! for Twin! kies  | Hostess Brands is near a deal to name a pair of private equity firms as the collective lead bidder for its Twinkies brand, a person briefed on the matter said on Tuesday. DealBook Â'
AMR Chief Said to Be in Talks to Become Chairman of Merged Company  | Tom Horton, the chief executive of AMR, “is in talks about becoming board chairman if the American Airlines parent merges with US Airways Group Inc., one of a number of signs both companies are nearing a deal that could create the world’s largest airline by traffic, said people familiar with the discussions,†The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
Thermo Fisher Said to Weigh Making an Offer for Life Technologies  |Â
REUTERS
DuPont Said to Consider Selling Cyanide Unit  |Â
REUTERS
OpenTable to Acquire Foodspotting for $10 Million  | OpenTable, the online reservation business, said on Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Foodspotting, a San Francisco social media start-up, for $10 million. DealBook Â'
Chief of the Jefferies Earned $19 Million in 2012 Â |Â Richard B. Handler, the chief executive of the Jefferies Group, made more in 2012 than Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase. DealBook Â'
Deutsche Bank Expected to Report a Loss  | Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg said restructuring costs would likely weigh on Deutsche Bank’s fourth-quarter results, which are to be reported on Thursday. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Gleacher to Leave His Investment Bank  | Eric J. Gleacher, a veteran deal maker who participated in the fight over RJR Nabisco, said on Tuesday that he would leave the investment bank he founded about 23 years ago. DealBook Â'
Morgan Stanley’s Cross-Asset Strategist to Leave the Firm  |Â
BLOOMBERG NEWS
In Dell Buyout, Founder Said to Seek Majority Control  | Bloomberg News reports: “Michael Dell is seeking majority control of Dell Inc. in a buyout that would combine his 15.7 percent stake in the company with as much as $1 billion of his personal funds, said people familiar with the matter.†BLOOMBERG NEWS
Rubenstein Pledges $50 Million to Kennedy Center  | David M. Rubenstein, the Carlyle Group co-founder, is giving $50 million to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, making him the center’s largest donor, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Archer Capital Said to Consider Putting Ausfuel on the Block  | The Australian private equity firm Archer Capital is considering selling Ausfuel, a wholesale oil distributor that could be worth up to $681 million, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL
Pensioners on the Side of Hedge Funds Against Argentina  | Several holdouts from a debt swap who are pensioners traveled to New York, a month before an appeals court is to make an important decision on a legal case that has pitted the hedge fund manager Paul E. Singer against the government of Arg! entina. DealBook Â'
Herbalife Registers Web Sites in Ackman’s Name  | After the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman accused Herbalife of being a fraud, the company registered Internet domain names that involve the investor’s name, including therealbillackman.com and billackman.net, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS
Elliott Management Calls for Board Shake-Up at Hess  | The hedge fund, run by Paul E. Singer, pushed Hess investors on Tuesday to vote for a slate of five independent directors, as part of broader effort to blster the oil company’s share price. DealBook Â'
The Case for Shaking Up the Hess Board  | With a too cozy board, It’s no coincidence that the oil company has had a record of inefficient operations, Christopher Swann of Reuters Breakingviews writes. DealBook Â'
How Facebook Is Remaking Itself  | In an effort to improve its market value, Facebook is “re-engineering itself into a mobile business,†The Wall Street Journal! writes. ! WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mapletree Investments Said to Seek $1.2 Billion I.P.O. of Property Assets  |Â
BLOOMBERG NEWS
In Tech Deals, Google and Facebook Were Active in 2012 Â |Â The data provider CB Insights released a report showing that 2,277 private technology companies were acquired in 2012. TECHCRUNCH
Fed May Be Forced to Sell Bonds at a Loss  | The Wall Street Journal reports: “The Federal Reserve could be charting a course that leaves the highly profitable central bank with no extra income to hand over to the U.S. Treasury for several years. That is the conclusion of five Fed staff economists who examined how the central bank’s bond-buying programs will affect its profitability over the long run.†WALL STREET JOURNAL
French Central Bank! Workers ! on Strike  | The New York Times reports: “The French central bank is going on strike. More than 1,500 employees were demonstrating Tuesday in Paris, union officials said, in a protest against a restructuring of the Banque de France that is expected to result in the loss of about 2,500 jobs by 2020.†NEW YORK TIMES
R.B.S. Stock Drops Amid Concerns of Potential Guilty Plea in Libor Case  | Shares of the Royal Bank of Scotland stumbled on Tuesday after it emerged that federal authorities were pursuing a guilty plea against an Asian subsidiary at the center of an interest-rate manipulation scandal. DealBook Â'/p>
Fischer to Leave Bank of Israel  | Stanley Fischer, a former vice chairman of Citigroup, announced on Tuesday that he would step down on June 30 as governor of Israel’s central bank. DealBook Â'
Smog, Fraud and Diplomacy  | Some believe that China’s environmental crisis, if left unchecked, may ultimately threaten the Communist Party’s rule, Bill Bishop writes in the China Insider column. DealBook Â'
