Word: mobilizations
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Thus ended five weeks of financial maneuvering, courtroom battles, noisy public name-calling and political infighting, all aimed at acquiring the nation's ninth largest oil company. Du Pont had won Conoco by outbidding Seagram, the world's biggest liquor distiller, and Mobil Oil, the second largest American petroleum firm. "There's never been a merger contest like it," said Joseph Perella, a member of the team of investment bankers from First Boston that advised Du Pont on its winning strategy...
...Pont won its hotly contested prize through skill and guile. After making the initial takeover bid on Conoco, Du Pont stood by quietly as Mobil and Seagram aggressively justified their positions in newspaper ads and Conoco filed harassing lawsuits against both. At the same time, Du Pont was executing a clever financial play that enabled it to acquire a majority of Conoco shares at a lower price than Mobil was offering...
...Mobil, on the other hand, set limits on its offer. Although it raised its bid from $90 to $105, and finally last week to $115 and $120 per share, Mobil's proposal was conditional on its obtaining 51% of Conoco's shares. Mobil also had a severe handicap because it was never able to shake the fear that the Justice Department would block the merger of two oil companies on antitrust grounds...
When last week's deadline for investors to sell stock approached, Du Pont had received 47.3 million shares, or 55%, of Conoco stock. Mobil had managed to acquire only 736,000 shares, while Seagram had almost 27 million shares. After its takeover bid had failed, Mobil sold its Conoco stock to Seagram. When Seagram finally converts all its Conoco holdings into Du Pont shares, it will own about 20% of the company and be the second largest shareholder next to the Du Pont family. The stock purchase took Seagram out of bidding for any other oil company...
Those smaller oil firms can be expected to fight just as hard as Conoco to stay out of the hands of the larger energy companies. Said Bailey last week: "Had Mobil been permitted to acquire Conoco, there would have been other such mergers initiated by the major oil companies. A real threat existed that a large number of oil companies in the middle tier, like Conoco, would have been eliminated." Several of those firms, including Cities Service and Marathon, have already arranged their own lines of bank credit to fight off unfriendly takeover attempts...