Donoreo My FIL owned a lot of stock in Parkland, not sure if he still does.
From reading between the lines in all the articles I can find, it looks like the Simpson Oil complaint isn’t so much that “Parkland is being sold to Sunoco” – it is more along the lines of – We the shareholders lost confidence in the existing CEO and board of directors because they were doing an abysmal job leading the company. As shareholders we had voted to replace the CEO and the board and that was to take place at the shareholder meeting this week. Instead, the old board of directors decided to sell the company before the new board and CEO could come in and assess the company and determine if a sale, and a sale at what price, would be proper for the shareholders.
Guaranteed the sale as structured will not go through. There’s no way any court will allow a sale of a major company by a lame duck ceo and board of directors when the majority of shareholders (over 60%) had already voted to replace them.
This does not mean Sunoco won’t buy Parkland eventually - it just means the chances of this sale, as structured, completing and closing, are probably about as likely as me walking on the moon in 2025. The new board and CEO need to be seated, they need to review the Sunoco offer, and decide if it is in the shareholders best interest to continue to pursue the sale at the original strike price or if there is further negotiations needed, or if they should walk away from Sunoco (they did that once a couple years ago already).