Liam Denning, Columnist

Oxy Faces a Heavyweight in Anadarko Prize Fight

Occidental has an edge in price and cash for now, but also far more risks than Chevron.

April 24, 2019 at 4:16 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Some punches are tough to get up from.
Photographer: AFP/Getty Images

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Now that there’s a bidding war for Anadarko Petroleum Corp., we all know who the big winners are: Anadarko’s executives. Oh yeah, and the shareholders, too.

It’s been a bruising 24 hours for CEO Al Walker and the board. First, it emerged the board had tweaked severance terms in favor of the C-suite just a day before Chevron Corp. announced its agreed offer. Then, on Wednesday morning, persistent suitor Occidental Petroleum Corp. weighed in with a rival bid and a letter than began sweetly enough but segued quickly to this sort of thing: