New York-based Jana Partners LLC has requested certain books and records of The Houston Exploration Co., Houston, (NYSE: THX) due to the board's "repeated and potentially actionable disregard for its fiduciary duties and the waste of corporate assets." Jana owns about 9.9% of THX's outstanding shares. Rosenstein says the THX board has pursued expensive acquisitions and inefficient debt repayment, and been unresponsive to Jana's requests for discussion about the best use of the proceeds from the recent Gulf of Mexico asset sales. In response, THX management reports, "We give serious consideration to all of our shareholders' views. We speak and meet with them, and the same applies to Jana. "Our board is focused on enhancing shareholder value, and we will continue to take the actions that we believe will enable us to achieve this objective...."