I just got off the phone with John Christian, attorney with Cassels Brock, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, who is the lead attorney arranging representation for IOC/Exxon dissenters. He and his firm were previously Phil Mulacek's law firm for the successful appeal of the original Yukon Court decision on the first go-round of the Exxon/IOC deal.
Mr. Christian and his litigation partner are in the process of gathering as many dissenters as possible into a pool of clients in order to begin the process of negotiation/litigation with Exxon over the dissent offer. They hope to conclude the recruitment of clients by this coming Monday, March 20. At that time, they will prepare a pro-rata retainer agreement that will provide representation in both the negotiation phase and any possible litigation phase to achieve a better offer from Exxon. Such retainer would be split between all dissenters who agree to be represented by them on a pro-rata per-share basis. They estimate the initial retainer cost as $50,000. They hope to have at least 100,000+ shares involved (out of the 263,000 that dissented). At 100,000 shares, the per share cost of the retainer would be $.50/share, or $500/1000 shares.
They expressed tentative hope that Exxon would be willing to settle with as many dissenters as possible as soon as possible at a higher value than was offered. They also noted that they believe that Exxon came back with the initial offer at essentially the same value as the deal in order to allow those who attempted to withdraw their dissent to be able to quickly convert their dissenting shares to cash and CRPs at the same essential value as the non-dissenting shareholders [Kaliboo and JFT take note]. Also, they hoped to have negotiations concluded rather quickly, either by the May 15, 2017 deadline that Exxon has put on the initial dissenter offer, or shortly thereafter as well as any required extension of the offer deadline to accomodate such negotiations. Finally, they noted that Exxon may well insist that all dissenting shareholders that are represented by this firm accept the negotiated second offer, which they noted would be as high as possible. If they are unable to negotiate an acceptable offer, the next step would be to file an application with the Yukon Supreme Court and seek a fair value appraisal from the court--a much more time [and money] consuming process.
If any dissenting shareholders would like to join in this legal representation, please contact Mr. Christian. He asked that I not post his email address in a public forum. So please email him at an email address that consists of his first initial followed by his last name [as one word with no spaces] followed by @ and then the name of the law firm [as one word with no spaces] followed by dot com.
