Chesapeake CEO Sells Stock In Company, Blames Crisis

Not to end your week on another downer, but Aubrey K. McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp. and its largest individual shareholder, has been forced to sell “substantially all of his shares” of common stock in the company, in order to meet margin loan calls. The reason underlying the margin calls, according to McClendon: “the extraordinary circumstances of the worldwide financial crisis.” McClendon’s the guy you’ve been seeing on TV pitching Boone Pickens’ natural-gas plan, and Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake is a major player in the Barnett Shale.