Boone Pickens pushed Gulf to consider a sale after much speculation had arisen in wake of the news of a buyout. After organizing a group of investors to buy over 10% of Gulf at market prices ranging in the high 30s to low 40s, Pickens then made a public offer to buy a large portion of Gulf shares. Although Mesa (Pickens’ company) offered 65$ per share, a price well above the market price, Gulf was aware that Mesa did not have the assets to acquire a majority of Gulf. This is important because Boone Pickens was notorious for buying other companies’ stocks and pushing their shares to inflate while then dumping them as “royalty stock” which in the long term hurt the companies. Instead of being partially acquired by an investor that had no intention of developing the company, James Murdy, an executive at Gulf, pushed to look for a white knight to merge with. In hopes of doing this, Murdy reincorporated in Delaware which required a majority vote to make decisions and then changed the minimum offer to 21.3% shares, an amount too large for Mesa to buy. Gulf opened itself up to other bids and started to liquidate so that others could buy into Mesa. There are numerous reasons why Gulf management was acting in favor of their stockholders/stakeholders. Pickens was known for acquiring parts of companies, allowing their stock to valuate, selling stock and allowing them to devaluate leaving everyone else out to dry. Pickens tried to cover his intentions by publicly announcing plans to change management and his sole objective of obtaining a majority hold was to gain the ability to do so. In reality, Pickens had no real way of doing this as Gulf had already stated they would take nothing under $70 per share and Mesa had nowhere near that amount of funds. This minimum would be a place of contention because on one hand, the stock at market price was significantly lower but, on the