Opinion ID: 1478250
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Self-Tenders

Text: The Corporation occasionally offered to purchase the Class B stock of the non-employee stockholders through a series of self-tender offers. During the late 1970s the Corporation attempted to purchase the outstanding Class B shares held by Guy C. Blackwell, Owen G. Blackwell and Martha G. Hestand, the Corporation's only non-employee stockholders. The Corporation first offered to repurchase the children's stock at $45 per share shortly after they acquired it from Mrs. Barton. The children rejected the offer and the stock subsequently split 25-for-1 in 1976. A second unsuccessful repurchase offer was made in 1977. At that time, the Corporation offered the children $8.22 per share. In light of the stock split, this price appears to be approximately four times the amount the Corporation paid for Mrs. Barton's Class B shares three years earlier. In 1979 the Corporation again approached the children and offered to repurchase their stock at a price of $15 per share. Martha Hestand accepted the offer and tendered her shares to the Corporation. Guy and Owen Blackwell, however, refused to sell their shares at that price. The Corporation made no further repurchase offers until May 1985, when the ESOP undertook a tender offer to repurchase 48,000 shares of Class B stock, concurrently with a tender offer by the Corporation for 39,000 Class A and 100,000 Class B shares at a price of $25 per share. The book value of the Class A stock and the Class B stock at that time was $38.39 and $26.35, respectively. The remaining children and the other plaintiffs in the present action refused to sell. [3]