U.S. megamergers on the wane. (M & A, a supplement to Euromoney Corporate Finance – July 1986)

US MEGAMERGERS ON THE WANE When the management of Alamito corp announced its decision to take the company private last autumn via a leveraged buyout (LBO) at $125 a share, few could have anticipated the bidding war that would ensue. At one point, remembered Daniel Good, head of the mergers and acquisitions department at EF Hutton, Alamito's investment bank, "we literally received a bid an hour and in totoal there were 14 separate bids". Eventually, the competition narrowed to four bidders and the victor was Osceola Energy Inc, which agreed to pay $165 a share, a whopping premium over management's original price.