Word: conoco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With stunning swiftness, the $6.5 billion battle between Mobil Corp. and U.S. Steel for control of Marathon Oil turned nasty last week. Mobil, still frustrated and angry over its defeat by Du Pont earlier this year in the struggle to take over Conoco, seemed on the brink of losing again. Then Mobil suddenly went on the offensive with a daring ploy. The oil company announced that it intended to buy up to 25% of its bidding rival, U.S. Steel. Said one banker involved in the dealing: "They have tried to put a gun on the head of U.S. Steel...
...those troubles, U.S. Steel last week announced that it was offering about $6.4 billion in cash and notes to acquire Marathon Oil, the 17th biggest American petroleum company. The deal ranks just behind last summer's successful $7.3 billion bid by Du Pont, the chemical giant, to buy Conoco, the ninth biggest American oil firm. Critics immediately began charging that U.S. Steel should be using the money for its own development. Lionel Olmer, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, said that the agreement "calls into question the seriousness of the steel industry's efforts to modernize...
Wall Street's main concern is the bulging federal deficit, which s $55.6 billion this year and rising. Government borrowing weighs heavily on credit markets already strained by brisk demand for business loans, including the huge sums to finance megabuck corporate mergers like that between Du Pont and Conoco. The Administration has predicted that the deficit will shrink to $42.5 billion in 1982, and disappear altogether by 1984. But those targets are fast slipping away. The Congressional Budget Office forecast last week that the deficit would be $65 billion in 1982 and would total an extra $50 billion...
Companies with large amounts of cash on hand, including Seagram and Bendix, have also been benefiting. High interest rates have depressed the price of certain energy stocks like Conoco. As a result, the cash-rich firms can buy the undervalued ones at a fraction of their true worth...
Nevertheless, synfuel projects often cost $1 billion or more, and some developers are deciding that they are too expensive. Conoco's proposed coal gasification project in Noble County, Ohio, has been stopped because the Reagan Administration refused to subsidize...