That’s what happened: Herbalife announced that its new auditing firm would be PricewaterhouseCoopers and that the firm would begin immediately to re-audit the company’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal years 2010, 2011, 2012, and the first quarter of 2013.

Today’s announcement is a follow-up to an announcement on April 9th that Herbalife’s former auditing firm, KPMG, had fired a senior partner for divulging insider information that was used to trade stocks in West Coast-based companies, including Herbalife and Skechers USA Inc. (NYSE: SKX). KPMG resigned the two accounts.

Herbalife is the center of a controversial claim by hedge fund manager William Ackman that the company is a pyramid scheme. Ackman has taken a short position of about $1 billion in Herbalife, which has gathered support from activist investor Carl Icahn.

Trading in Herbalife’s shares resumed in less than 20 minutes and the stock is trading about 3% at $50.70 in a 52-week range of $24.24 to $56.39.

The Wall Street Journal reported the hiring this morning, citing “people familiar with the matter.” Lawler joined Anadarko in 2006 with the company’s acquisition of Kerr-McGee, where he had been employed since 1988. He is a petroleum engineer with long experience in operations.

Lawler’s selection is an interesting choice. Chesapeake’s problems stem from aggressive leasing followed by proving the presence of the resource and then flipping the property for a profit. As natural gas prices collapsed, the company took on a number of partners that were given a share of production in exchange for cash and promises to provide more cash for operations in the future.

The company’s CEO selection could have gone in several directions. One obvious choice would have been a financial wizard who could have sifted through the company’s assets, jettisoning the losers and strengthening Chesapeake’s free cash flow. The course the company’s board took, however, appears to be one in which it will seek to maximize the value of the properties it retained in order to keep its investors happy. Lawler’s operations background makes him a good fit for that role.

Like other producers of natural gas, prices below $4 per thousand cubic feet of gas have pressured revenues and profits for Chesapeake. Most observers and natural gas experts expect prices to rise this year and into next, with the most optimistic looking for prices to double. That will have a larger impact on Chesapeake’s cash flow than any CEO.

At least those seem to be the likeliest conclusions to be drawn from the brief letter that Dell’s board sent to Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management this morning. Here’s the money quote:

Unless the Board of Directors of Dell determines that your proposal could reasonably be expected to result in a “Superior Proposal” as defined in the Company’s existing merger agreement with affiliates of Silver Lake and Michael Dell, we are not permitted to provide you with information or engage in discussions concerning your proposal.

That sounds pretty much like a “put up or shut up” challenge. On May 10, Icahn and Southeastern suggested an alternative to Dell/Silver Lake’s $24.4 billion buyout that would have paid Dell shareholders $12 a share in cash or awarded shareholders $12 a share in additional stock and allow shareholders to keep their stakes in Dell, which would remain a publicly traded company. Dell’s board asked for more information on May 13, and today’s letter repeats that request.

Dell’s stock has wobbled between about $13.50 and $14.50 a share for the past three months. The shares closed at $13.40 on Friday and have been inactive this morning. The 52-week range is $8.69 to $15.29.

In something of a face-saving victory, Icahn did manage to put one of his three candidates on Transocean’s board. Sam Merksamer will replace board chairman Michael Talbert who had said he would resign from the board even if re-elected. He won’t have to write that resignation letter now.

Transocean’s CEO told The Wall Street Journal that the company “welcomes” Merksamer to the board and that there won’t be any issues with seating the new board member.

At its annual meeting yesterday shareholders did approve a smaller dividend payment of $2.24 a share that had been proposed by Transocean’s management and supported by to institutional investors’ advisory firms. The dividend will be paid in 4 quarterly installments of $0.56 a share beginning in June.

Shares of Transocean are trading down 1.8% at $53.76 in a 52-week range of $39.32 to $59.50.

The company has appointed the former CEO of BP PLC (NYSE: BP), Tony Hayward, as its interim chairman. Hayward is the senior independent director and deputy chairman of Glencore Xstrata.

Bond, who is 70 years old, had already said he would step down as chairman after a search for a new chairman had been completed. Shareholders did not want to wait that long apparently.

Shareholders rejected the original terms of the merger agreement between Glencore and Xstrata, which Bond had negotiated. They were especially unhappy with the generous retention packages being recommended for Xstrata executives. Bond’s decision to step down came following that rejection.

A second director, Steve Robson, was also rejected by shareholders in a proxy vote, and he resigned before today’s annual meeting.

Hayward presided over BP at the time of the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, which claimed the lives of 11 workers and dumped millions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. Hayward took a lot of heat for the seemingly cavalier manner in which he responded to the disaster, and he resigned under pressure in July 2010. He is currently the CEO of a small oil company with operations in Kurdistan.

The New York Times reported on the lack of shareholder access:

Now, in the midst of one of the most closely watched investor votes in years — over whether to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive at JPMorgan Chase — that protocol has changed. The firm that is providing tabulations of the JPMorgan vote stopped giving voting snapshots to the proposal’s sponsors last week. The change followed a request from Wall Street’s main lobby group, the firm says.

The pension fund shareholders that are promoting a split at the top of the bank are crying foul. Knowing the current tally is critical for both sides in shaping their campaigns, they say — cutting off access to them gives JPMorgan, which is getting frequent updates, an upper hand.

“They have changed the rules in the middle of the game and it has created an unfair advantage,” said Michael Garland, assistant comptroller who heads corporate governance for the New York City comptroller John Liu. “It’s like playing a game where only the home team gets to know the score.”

Duke, who is 63 years old, has not announced a retirement date, but a report at Bloomberg News cites “a person familiar with the situation” as saying that Walmart may name a successor in the next several months. The leading candidates are Walmart U.S. chief Bill Simon and international chief Doug McMillon.

While Walmart has never gone outside the company for a CEO, maybe it’s now time to reconsider that strategy. The internal candidates bear at least some responsibility for the problems that Walmart now faces: slipping U.S. sales, increasing demands from workers and labor unions for better working conditions and pay, and, of course, the bribery allegations in Mexico.

Why not look outside for someone who doesn’t carry any of that baggage and may in fact do something to fix those problems? Because that’s not the Walmart way. Walmart instead adopts a bunker mentality, denies everything, and outwaits (not ‘outwits’) its critics. It’s worked this long and there’s no reason to expect that it won’t work again.

Simon, who had a 25-year career in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve before turning to business, joined Walmart in 2006 and may be best suited to carry on the Walmart tradition. McMillon, who began his Walmart career in 1984 as a summer hire and is a native of Arkansas, has more Walmart blue in his blood and that may carry the day.

Stillwater’s eight-person board will now be split evenly between four candidates loyal to chairman and CEO Frank McAllister and the four members supported by The Clinton Group. Prior to the election, the hedge fund had turned down an offer to accept four seats on Stillwater’s board, and Schweitzer said that an even split offered “the worst governance you could imagine.”

Following yesterday’s vote, Schweitzer said that the election was a “huge victory.” That’s a good politician for you.

McAllister will remain chairman and CEO of the company, but expects a new CEO to be appointed at some unspecified future date. He also acknowledged that Stillwater’s shareholders want the company to remain focused on its Montana operations.

The fight for control of Stillwater pitted Schweitzer and his side arguing that recent acquisitions in Argentina and Canada threatened the viability of Stillwater’s Montana platinum and palladium operations. McAllister and his side countered that the hedge funders and the ex-governor wanted to take over the company for a song and had no idea how to run a mining business.

Schweitzer has now won three consecutive elections and most people think he is setting up to take a run at the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Max Baucus, who is not seeking re-election to a seventh term.

Stillwater’s shares are up more than 4% today, at $12.55 in a 52-week range of $7.47 to $14.87.

According to a new look at pay differences completed by Bloomberg News, there are seven other CEOs who earned more than 1,000 times the salary and benefits of an average employee at his firm. And yes, the top eight are all men. The first woman on the list comes in at number 24, Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Mondelez International Inc. (NASDAQ: MDLZ), whose $21.9 million in 2011 pay was 565 times the average employee’s $38,810 earnings in salary and benefits.

As part of the Dodd-Frank legislation, Congress ordered the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose the ratio of CEO pay to the median of all other company employees. The SEC has not yet produced such a rule, and the lobbying effort against a rule could delay a decision for some time to come.

It is true that a lot of a CEO’s compensation comes from options on stock that vest over several years and that the change in accounting rules now requires companies to report the stock grants fully in the year they are awarded. Former Penney’s CEO Johnson told Bloomberg that his majestic 2012 pay was due to Penney’s desire to have him begin work before he fully vested some $80 million in shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). Had Johnson lasted through 2013, his pay would have been $1.9 million in salary, period.

The second-widest differential on the Bloomberg list occurs at Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE: ANF), where CEO Michael Jefferies raked in $48.1 million in 2012, some 1,640 times more than the average worker’s pay of $29,310. Of that total, $43.2 million were stock options that were underwater as of April 25, 2013.

Bloomberg’s list is available here.

For a company with a market cap of around $182 million, one might argue that Martha Stewart is overpaid. Ralph Lauren Corp. (NYSE: RL) has a market cap of more than $15 billion and Mr. Lauren was paid a base salary of $1.25 million in fiscal year 2012, and he was eligible for bonus payments up to an additional $19.5 million. Lauren also serves as his company’s CEO and chairman, while Stewart is the nonexecutive chairman and chief editorial media and content officer at MSO.

Stewart’s compensation is virtually all guaranteed by an “Intangible Asset License Agreement” that treats Stewart as “talent,” in much the same way that a movie or TV actor is treated. Last year, MSO extended Stewart’s contract, which was set to expire last March, through June of 2017, although terms have not yet been finalized. According to an amended Form 10-K filing made last week, “Ms. Stewart’s base salary recognizes her incredible value to the company in providing her creativity and talent to the company’s businesses.”

In other words, without Martha Stewart there is no MSO. She is in the driver’s seat at contract time. And how does it pay off? Well, when MSO announced its controversial agreement with J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP), J.C. Penney was required to purchase 11 million shares at a cost of $38.5 million.

The current court fight between J.C. Penney and Macy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) turns on the value of Stewart’s name. Stewart’s value may not be “incredible” to either J.C. Penney or Macy’s, but it is definitely large enough to wage an expensive courtroom battle over.

While Stewart’s total compensation package appears to be out of line with the company’s market cap and sales, without her name MSO likely would be out of business.