Word: chevroned
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...months ago, when China's state-run oil company, CNOOC, bid to buy California-based Unocal? Capitol Hill went crazy with talk that China was muscling in on America's strategic interests. China's leaders were baffled by all the politicking: CNOOC made a pretty good offer, they thought; Chevron wound up bidding less but still winning the deal. So Mr. Hu is in no mood to hear Mr. Bush talk about how China should use its leverage against Iran...
...Once CNOOC had bid $18.5 billion for Unocal, topping Chevron's offer, the action quickly shifted to Washington. There, egged on by Chevron's lobbyists, Congress raised a series of objections to the deal, particularly noting supposed security risks for the U.S. in a CNOOC-Unocal marriage. Most energy experts believe that the risks either didn't exist, or could easily have been dealt with. "There are no security issues?none," oil consultant Philip Verleger said earlier this summer. It was the congressional opposition that CNOOC's advisors?all American, all very experienced, and all very well paid?didn...
...late March, failing to inform his board members about the bid until just two days before he was going to launch it. When virtually the entire eight-member board?and not, as earlier reports had it, just the outside directors?balked, Fu had to back off. That allowed Chevron to make the first bid, and forced CNOOC to play catch-up all summer. Meanwhile, Chevron vice-chairman Peter Robertson, who had given a fawning speech in Beijing about his company's great "faith in China" last October (not surprisingly, given the company's extensive business ties to China), turned around...
...Sometimes CNOOC's high-paid bankers were no more helpful than its Beltway advisers. Two principal lines of attack for Chevron's allies were that the CNOOC bid was effectively subsidized by sweetheart loans from the government, and that there was no "level playing field"?that is to say, a U.S. energy company could not acquire one of its competitors in China. Both points were, in fact, true. But earlier this summer leaks began appearing in the financial press?and word was spread around Washington?that there wasn't "one dime of [Chinese] government money" involved in the deal...
...Unocal's board had, on July 21, reaffirmed its commitment to Chevron after its CEO, David O'Reilly, had sweetened his offer. On August 10, Unocal's shareholders were to choose between the two suitors. Rather than increase his bid, as his bankers urged, Fu folded. By the end of the August 4 meeting with his board in Beijing, the mood had lightened somewhat. "You got the sense that we were at least beginning to look at this whole episode in a slightly different way," says one participant. Already, there is speculation in the markets about who else the Chinese...