Word: marathoning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Executives of the nation's largest steel producer agreed. They denounced the Mobil move as "a very reckless action aimed solely at coercing U.S. Steel to abandon its acquisition of Marathon." Reckless or not, Mobil revealed that it already owns 450,000 shares of U.S. Steel. And at the current stock price of $31% a share, the one-quarter ownership of the steelmaker would cost Mobil only about $700 million...
Financial experts speculated that Mobil was really trying to force the steel company to drop out of the bidding for Marathon or, alternatively, to get control of enough U.S. Steel stock so that the steel company would have to give up part of Marathon. Such aggressive tactics have worked before. Dome Petroleum of Canada last spring bought about 25% of Conoco as a means of compelling that company to relinquish interest in a Canadian oil property that Dome wanted...
Mobil entered the battles for Conoco and Marathon because it desperately wants to get additional domestic oil and gas sources to ease its dependence on supplies from Saudi Arabia and some potentially unstable countries. Even though Mobil spent $4.3 billion on domestic exploration and production between 1976 and 1980, its U.S. reserves declined by 6% in the past five years. Buying Marathon could increase Mobil's American oil supplies by 75%. For example, the Yates Field in West Texas, where Marathon owns a half-interest, now produces...
...observers blame its failures on the insistence of Chairman Rawleigh Warner and President William Tavoulareas that they plan their own tactics without consulting outside advisers. Mobil lost out to Du Pont in the contest for Conoco by coming in with a low bid. Its initial $5.1 billion offer for Marathon in October was also immediately denounced as "grossly inadequate" by the company's president, Harold Hoopman. Said a leading investment banker: "If Mobil had bid $126 a share from day one, instead of $85 a share, they would have cut out U.S. Steel from the beginning...
Mobil's bid for Marathon seemed doomed almost from the start. The company suffered defeat after defeat in a series of legal battles fought on several fronts. Last week a federal district court judge in Cleveland again upheld his own decision that the Mobil takeover would reduce competition among gasoline retailers in the Middle West and should not be permitted. Only a few days earlier, another federal court judge in Columbus denied Mobil's request to stop U.S. Steel's offer for Marathon...