Is Chesapeake for Sale?

I'm sorry to stoke a fire, but I just saw Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McLendon on the local news, insisting that the company isn't for sale.
The one thing I have learned as a business reporter is that when a CEO insists that the company isn't for sale, it's usually the lead indicator that the company IS for sale.
Also, I have experience in a corporation where all the executives insisted that our company wasn't for sale.
They would take us on retreats at fancy lodges and stuff our bellies full with wonderful, expensive dinners, and insist to us that "You may have heard that we're for sale. But we're not."
Then we were sold.
TWICE.
You can look it up. Matrix Essentials Inc. of Solon, Ohio, was privately owned by the Miller family, and then the patriarch died.
We were sold to Bristol Myers Squibb.
Then Bristol Myers said, "Hey, we're a pharmaceutical company. Why on God's green Earth did we buy a salon products company?"
(I tried telling them that, but I was a lowly newbie who just had the responsibility of getting a magazine published every month).
Matrix didn't fit in their business model. It took officials one year to figure this out. It took me three seconds to figure it out.
Then we were sold to L'Oreal.
Now, something caused McLendon to get his mug on television and beg the press to do a one-sided story. Especially on local news shows, that's not hard. And of course, they did it.
I'm sitting here screaming, "Hello?! Where are the analysts? Did you bother to look through their SEC filings?"
But remember, CEOs are like presidents of countries: They are paid to maintain calm. They lie so easily, and they will insist it's not lying. They have ways of talking around it. It's what they learn in CEO and President School.
"No, no, no," presidents of countries have said, "we're not in financial trouble. Here, have a stimulus check. Go buy yourself something purty."
Sound familiar?
Especially if Chesapeake needs a broader geographic position somewhere in the United States, and it feels it can only get there if it's acquired by a larger firm, then it will sell.
TRUST ME.
Now, I can give you my theories of what may have happened. Maybe some other company was interested in buying Chesapeake, and the sides went through months, maybe even years, of negotiations, and no deal was ever reached.
That would be my guess as to what happened.
Or, there are ongoing talks, and eventually, there will be a purchase agreement.
But I will tell you a Cardinal Rule of Business: A company ALWAYS is for sale.
TRUST ME.
Also, remember that Chesapeake is getting a lot of attention now with the Obama Administration taking over in 2009.
So if you've seen the news that McLendon says, "No, no, no, forget those silly rumors you've heard," then I would take that with a huge, old whopping grain of salt and expect the company could be sold.