Investor Updates: Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF), Star Gas Partners, L.P. (NYSE:SGU), BioLife Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:BLFS)

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) announced Thursday that independent proxy advisory firm Egan-Jones Proxy Services has recommended CLF shareholders should vote “for all” of Cliffs’ director nominees on the WHITE proxy card in connection with the upcoming annual shareholders’ meeting on July 29. In early trade, shares of the mining and natural resources company were down 0.6% to $15.62, moving within a 52-week range of $13.60 to $28.98.

Egan-Jones said, “[We believe that the] dissidents are unpersuasive in making their case that implementing their strategies and being given a majority of the seats on the Board (which would be vastly disproportionate to their current holdings in the Company) would likely lead to significant increases in stockholder value. We are particularly troubled by the dissidents’ reported insistence on requiring Mr. Lourenco Goncalves as the Company’s executive chairman, given his experience.”

The proxy advisory firm added, “[We believe] that the Company’s reconstituted Board and its new management team led by CEO Gary Halverson (newly appointed in February, 2014), having the qualifications and experience we believe necessary to lead the Company through the volatile iron ore and met coal price environment, deserve the opportunity to see through the implementation of their plans.”

Egan-Jones has sided with CLF while proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have recommended CLF shareholders to vote in favor a proxy put forth by activist fund Casablanca Capital, which holds a 5.2% stake in CLF.

Over the last six months, CLF and Casablanca Capital have been in heated discussions over the company’s strategy and board composition. Talks broke down in mid-March and Casablanca decided to take a proxy campaign to CLF shareholders, asking them to vote on the GOLD proxy card in connection with CLF’s July 29 shareholders’ meeting.

Star Gas Partners, L.P. (NYSE:SGU), a home energy distributor and services provider, will pay a quarterly distribution of $0.0875 per common unit for the fiscal 2014 third quarter ended June 30, 2014. The distribution will be paid to shareholders on August 8 2014.

This is the same as the previous quarterly distribution, which was paid on May 9. Shares in Star Gas Partners were trading 0.67% higher on Thursday morning at $6.53. This is towards the upper end of the company’s 52-week trading range, which has seen a share price low of $4.63 and a high of $7.24.

Shares of BioLife Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:BLFS) have soared nearly 19% in very heavy volume on Thursday after the biotech company signed a three-year deal with privately-owned Somahlution to manufacture DuraGraft, a tissue preservation solution for the storage of harvested veins used for coronary artery bypass grafts. The volume in the first hour has reached 533,108, close to its average volume for the whole session of 63,521 over the past month.

Financial terms of the deal were not released. Somahlution is a development-stage life science company focused on advancing the science of organ and surgical conduit transplantation. BLFS is currently trading at a near 3-month high of $2.97, but still nearer the low of its 52-week range of $1.75 to $23,94.