Purchaser: Texas Utilities
Acquisition: The Energy Group
Date: May 1998
Amount: $11 billion
Advisers: Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch (Texas Utilities); Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (The Energy Group)
In the year of the mega merger, it might seem strange to award the best M&A deal of the year to a relatively small, $11 billion, takeover. And to a deal that, arguably, was the last of its type: a US takeover of a UK utility company. Since Texas Utilities won the battle for The Energy Group (Teg) last May, other US companies, Dominion and Entergy, have sold their UK holdings, and UK companies, Scottish Power and National Grid, have made bids for counterparts in the US.
Other deals appear not just bigger, but trend-setting. The $54.3 billion merger of BP and Amoco in August (JP Morgan advised BP, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter advised Amoco) created a company with a market capitalization of $113 billion. The financing structure too was innovative, with BP issuing Amoco’s US investors with ADRs to replace its common stock—a strategy which few thought possible for such deals.
It also heralded the start of consolidation in the oil industry, and was followed by the merger of Exxon and Mobil in December.