Shareholders of the Williams Companies elected all of the nominees on the ballot for the company’s board of directors to one-year terms at the company’s 2016 annual meeting held on Wednesday, according to a report by The Tulsa World.
The five new board members include Stephen Bergstrom, former president and CEO of general partner American Midstream; Stephen Chazen, former CEO of Occidental Petroleum; Peter Ragauss, former Senior VP and CFO of Baker Hughes; Scott Sheffield, chairman and CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources Co.; and William Spence, chairman, president and CEO of PPL Corp.
The other three independent directors elected to the board Wednesday served on the board since this summer before the collapse of the Energy Transfer Equity merger. They include Chairwoman Kathleen Cooper, a senior fellow at Southern Methodist University; Murray Smith, president of Murray Smith & Associates and former minister of energy for Alberta, Canada; and Janice Stoney, former executive VP at US West Communications.
Three independent directors volunteered to step down from the board after six company directors resigned in June following an unsuccessful effort to oust CEO Alan Armstrong after the merger debacle. They include Juanita Hinshaw, president and CEO of H&H Advisors, who had been a director since 2004; John Hagg, chairman of Strad Energy Services Ltd., who had been a director since 2012; and Joseph Cleveland, former CIO of Lockheed Martin Corp., who had been a director since 2008.
The challenge to refresh the Williams board was led by activist investor Keith Meister, founder of New York-based hedge fund Corvex Management LP. Meister was one of the six company directors who resigned in June.
During the months that followed his resignation, Meister threatened a proxy battle but compromised in late September after the Tulsa-based pipeline company agreed to fill board vacancies with independent members.
