Fortune magazine’s annual list of the 500 largest U.S. publicly-owned companies has just been published, and the following 21 Houston-area companies made the list. The asterisk next to Anadarko’s name notes that the company is based in The Woodlands, which is 30 miles north of downtown Houston:
San Ramone, California-based ChevronTexaco Corp. won the bidding yesterday for its California-based rival Unocal Corp. yesterday in a cash-and-stock package valued at $16.8 billion. The deal is the largest oil-sector deal since 2001 when the acquirer was created under Chevron’s merger with Texaco.
ChevronTexaco is paying a premium price for Unocal as U.S. oil companies face heightened competition for scarce oil-and-gas reserves, many of which are locked up in regions where the companies are not welcome. The theory behind the deal is that it turns the merged company into the second-largest holder of oil-and-gas reserves in Southeast Asia behind Petrochina Co. and also strengthens ChevronTexaco’s presence in the Caspian Sea region.
However, today’s high oil prices can turn such deals upside down in a hurry. Although the price allows companies such as ChevronTexaco to have the strong balance sheet necessary for such acquisitions, should oil prices retreat from current levels in the next two to three years, the risk of write-downs in goodwill is high. ChevronTexaco hedged that risk somewhat by financing the deal mostly with its own stock — ChevronTexaco will pay $4.4 billion in cash and the balance in stock, and will assume $1.6 billion in Unocal debt.
Moreover, the deal reflects the increasing price that oil companies will pay for reserves. ChevronTexaco was able to replace only about 20% of the oil and gas that it produced in 2004, even though it generated in excess of $13 billion in profits and ended the year with over $9 billion in cash. The merged company will have daily production of over 3 million barrels of oil equivalents and increases ChevronTexaco’s reserves by about 15%.
The deal values Unocal at $62.07 a share, which is a 3.6% discount based on Unocal’s closing price of $64.35 on Friday. Widespread market anticipation that Unocal would be acquired has increased its share price nearly 50% since the beginning of the year. News of the deal actually sent both Unocal and ChevronTexaco stock down yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, Unocal to $59.60 and ChevronTexaco to $56.98.
In an effort to calm the harried investors in his latest target, American International Group Inc., New York AG (“Aspiring Governor”) the reigning Lord of Regulation Eliot Spitzer announced yesterday that his office expects to reach a civil settlement with AIG even as he rachets up the criminal investigation into several private entities closely tied to AIG’s business. Here are the previous posts on the developing AIG and Berkshire Hathaway debacle.
After being hammered for over a month, the price of AIG shares responded to the Lord’s announcement yesterday by increasing to $2.35, to $53.30 on the New York Stock Exchange. Even with yesterday’s spike, however, AIG shares are down 26% since the beginning of the Enronesque investigation into AIG’s finances. The seemingly bottomless drop in AIG’s share price is driven by the fact that no major financial company has survived criminal charges in the history of U.S. financial markets.
Meanwhile, seemingly just to make things more interesting, several senior AIG executives were fleeing the boards of C.V. Starr & Co. and Starr International Co,, two closely-owned AIG-associated entities, the former of which controls 12% of AIG’s stock. Former AIG chairman and CEO Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg is the CEO of Starr International, which uses its stake in AIG to provide deferred-compensation to AIG executives. Inasmuch as the Lord of Regulation does not approve of Mr. Greenberg’s tentacles affecting AIG, the AIG board is scrambling to disassociate itself from the closely-owned entities and reassert control over AIG’s executive compensation program.
Given the Lord’s disapproval of AIG’s arrangement with Starr International, that the structure of the arrangement may actually benefit AIG shareholders does not appear to be a particularly important consideration at this time to the AIG board.