Eike Batista's Shareholders Are Demanding He Make A Move That Could Finish Him For Good
According to the Wall Street Journal, shareholders in his flagship oil and gas company, OGX, are demanding the Batista make good on a promise he made back in 2012 - "the Batista put."
Basically Batista said he wold buy $1 billion worth of OGX stock by April 2013, but that never happened.
Now shareholders want him to buy up $100 million worth immediately, and buy the rest as needed.
OGX stock, down over 90% for the year, jumped 27% on this news, but here's the thing - Batista has fallen hard from his position this time last year. In the early fall of 2012 he was in the top 20 richest people in the world, now he's not even a billionaire and he's got a lot of debt to pay off.
So Batista has been selling off assets from his crumbling commodities empire (known all together as EBX) but observers wonder if he can pay for $1 billion worth OGX stock.
Because of his promise, Batista would have to pay 6.30 Brazilian reais per share. Shares are currently valued at 0.52 reais.
This is something (that could be hard) to watch.