Corporate intrigue at Dow Chemical

Today's New York Times has an article about the recent firings at Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW). This story gets stranger every day. New details suggest that the boardroom cloak and dagger, in which high level executives were fired after being accused of holding secret talks about possibly selling the company, involved personality conflicts as much as inside dealing and high-level greed. At this point, it's hard to tell whether the whole thing was fueled by corporate power plays gone wrong, or simply senior executives who couldn't get along with each other.

The power play in question involves a meeting allegedly held between a Dow executive and a Dow board member and bankers from JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), including its CEO, James Dimon. Dow claims that the executive, Romeo Kreinberg, who was in charge of the $21 billion performance plastics portfolio at Dow, and J. Pedro Reinhard, a board member, met with the bankers -- at a luxury hotel outside on the Thames called the Compleat Angler -- in an effort to sell Dow Chemical. Dow claims that they had no authority to do so, and so they were fired. Both men have now sued the company for defamation. And of course Dow is suing them right back.

But earlier events suggest a different story. In March, Dow's CEO, Andrew Liveris, gave Mr. Kreinberg a negative performance review. Its language is surprising, and suggests a conflict between the men that is based on personality and attitude. Mr. Liveris wrote, "I expect to see that your negative body language when you disagree with a course of action is eliminated," and then stated that his "recent behavior was the last straw and I will not allow such destructive behavior to be repeated." Mr. Liveris gave Mr. Kreinberg three months to straighten up and fly right, or else he'd be fired. To my ears, this sounds like an angry teacher disciplining a student, not adults disagreeing on corporate strategy. And Mr. Kreinberg and Mr. Reinhard dispute the claim that they were trying to sell Dow. They say that they were simply invited to a meeting with the bankers and quickly dismissed the idea. JPMorgan certainly is interested in selling Dow -- which would be enormously profitable for the bank of course -- but the fired Dow execs had nothing to do with it.

We probably haven't heard the last of this story yet. Stay tuned for more boardroom backstabbing, high-end fishing, and lawsuits all around.