NYC hedge funds crack fracking titan

Frack you!

A pair of New York-based hedge funds outmaneuvered new-age oil and gas titan Tom Ward, head of SandRidge Energy, according to a new book centered on the epic fortunes of a group of natural-gas wildcatters.

Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman writes in “The Frackers” that in June, cage-rattling hedge funds TPG-Axon Capital (headed by Dinakar Singh) and Mount Kellett Capital Management forced Oklahoma native Ward to step down from the board of the energy company he helped found.

Zuckerman’s book details the outsize ambitions of oil tycoons like Ward, 54, and Aubrey McClendon (co-founders of Chesapeake Energy), who came up with novel ways to extract hidden oil and gas treasures in America’s heartland and became billionaires virtually overnight.

Ward’s SandRidge was valued at as much as $10 billion during its peak in 2008 but has sunk to a market cap of less than $3 billion.

“The Frackers” says that TPG-Axon, led by Singh, claimed that Ward used SandRidge as a personal piggy bank, enriching himself and relatives while leaving shareholders of the company he took public in 2008 in the lurch.

“He’s incredibly greedy,” Singh told a colleague about Ward, according to “The Frackers.”

Singh’s fund, which isn’t typically an activist fund, eventually grew its interest in Sand­Ridge to 4.5 percent before forcing Ward out and taking board seats for itself.

That hasn’t helped Sand­Ridge’s shares, which closed at $5.89 on Friday — nearly 60 percent down from their 2009 peak of $14.29.

Ward’s own reputation doesn’t seem to have been hurt by his ouster from SandRidge. He scored a nearly $100 million golden parachute from the company because his ouster was deemed “without cause.”

Ward also raised $1.7 billion last month to fund a new, privately held energy venture, Tapstone Energy.

Zuckerman claims that Ward enriched himself to the tune of more than $3 billion by his ventures in SandRidge and Chesapeake.