Occidental updates Anadarko bid to remove shareholder vote requirement and beat Chevron’s rival offer
US oil and gas company Occidental said its updated $38bn (£29.02bn) bid to take over Anadarko Petroleum was designed to make it more attractive than a rival offer from Chevron by removing the requirement for a shareholder vote.
Occidental increased the cash component of its offer to 78 per cent on Sunday, meaning the deal could go ahead without a shareholder vote and allowing for “clarity of closing”.
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Occidental chief executive Vicki Hollub said Chevron’s $33bn merger offer had been considered superior to Occidental’s as it would not require a Chevron shareholder vote.
Hollub said the company did not want to bypass the vote but said it was in shareholders’ best interest to close the deal without increasing the price.
On Sunday Hollub said in a letter to Anadarko’s directors that the revised proposal does not require an Occidental shareholder vote “which has been repeatedly cited as the explanation for why you previously chose Chevron’s $65 offer over our $76 offer.”
She added that the updated bid represented a premium of 23.3 per cent over Chevron’s offer.
“We remain perplexed at your apparent resistance to obtaining far more value for Anadarko shareholders which has been expressed clearly through our interactions over the last week,” Hollub said in the letter.
Read more: Anadarko says it will talk to Occidental over $38bn bid
“As you know from our long-standing interest, we firmly believe that Occidental is uniquely positioned to create significant and sustainable growth and value from Anadarko’s asset portfolio.
“We hope we can execute this merger agreement without delay and proceed to bringing this exciting combination to fruition.”
The company also announced that in connection with its proposal to buy Anadarko it has entered into an agreement to sell Anadarko’s Algeria, Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa assets to Total for $8.8bn.