I know Noble was a great Oklahoma based Oil company. IMO the mistake made was acquiring Patina and all the baggage that came with it. A good company was introduced to the wild west way of conducting business.
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They all were lousy outfits
Neither Gerrity, Snyder or Patina were ever respected by anyone other than the insiders.
Questionable encounters??? Do tell!
I want to post an honest assessment. NBL bought Patina -> Patina was a respected and great company in the Rockies run by Jay & Tom. It made many employees millionaires and well respected by their peers. A Patina employee was proud to work there with the stock options and the way they were respected.
Along came NBL, DS & GW. They turned the company into a dog fight. GW was transferred to Denver after the acquisition and had several questionable encounters with employees that should have been questioned by HR. He is now one of the executives with NBL. Is this a company with good mgmt.? Will they track me down through "thelayoff.com"? I hope so because the truth will hurt GW.
I would offer up that Patina was f'd by Noble. TB & DK did more for Noble in trying to save the company than anyone knows. Sadly they got caught up in the Noble bull and are no longer there - and they were the backbone of Noble. Now what is there? Leviathan? Over-managed and over spent. Marcellus? Gone. WTx? See Leviathan. The DJ has saved Noble more times than anyone knows and it was the Patina purchase that made that happen. That said - should Noble disappear? Absolutely. Worthless company that went from a good place to a horrible place in less than 1 year...
Some of the people Noble has terminated has had me wondering what the selection process could even be for terminations. But I'm sure HR and the management team has a very fine tuned system given the experience they now have in letting employees go
So that's what happens when you get rid of too much of the quality help and others leave. The company has gotten rid of high performers across all functions including the November round when a lot of the older (more well paid) folks got let go. Let's save money by getting rid of good engineers, geologists, finance people, etc. Even dumped the hedge guy who KF gave kudos to during the "CFO webinars". Company definitely seems to be struggling for strategic direction, hopefully we'll find it soon! In the meantime, we all try to hang on and hope the younger talent develops quickly.
Noble was never a "great" company. They were a decent to good company even as recent as 2010 to 2013. Now they are an awful company... probably the worst in their peer group.