VeraSun: Who is that White Knight? (VSUNQ, CHSCP)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Ethanol maker VeraSun (VSUNQ) is currently in Chapter 11, and is spreading the suffering to growers because it has stopped buying feedstock (corn) that it can’t pay for.  But never fear, help is on the way. Maybe.

VeraSun announced yesterday that it has received "a non-bindingunsolicited indication of interest" from an unnamed buyer for"substantially all of its assets." It’s hard to imagine anything exceptan offer from a producer cooperative like CHS (NASDAQ:CHSCP), or a big,non-public ag company like Cargill. They’re the only guys who reallyhave a dog in this hunt. If there’s an sense left in the ethanolbusiness, any publicly-traded company that makes an offer for VeraSun will belooking for new management within the hour.

If you have gotten so used to bad news that you can’t stomach the thought of anything positive, you may still get your medicine you are used to.  An offer to buy assets out of bankruptcy generally helps the company and the creditors at the expense of the common stock holders.  Sometimes White Knights are nothing more than road bandits.

Paul Ausick
November 25, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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