Potential Anadarko bidding war continues wild week for massive M&A

A bidding war for Anadarko could be brewing between rival oil producers Occidental Petroleum and Chevron. Although Anadarko agreed earlier this month to be bought by Chevron for $33 billion, on Monday the company announced it intends to resume negotiations with Occidental, which submitted an unsolicited $38 billion bid late last week.

Anadarko said its board unanimously determined Occidental's cash-and-stock bid could indeed be the better deal.

The news marks a major win for Occidental, which has been vying for Anadarko since January 2018, making several separate bids before Chevron and Anadarko went public with their deal on April 12, according to Bloomberg. While reports say Chevron is hesitant to join a bidding war, it may soon have no choice if it wants to hold on to a deal.

If an agreement with Occidental is reached, Anadarko would reportedly owe Chevron a $1 billion breakup fee.

With more to come in the Anadarko saga, we took a look at four other M&A storylines that had major developments over the past week: Nissan and Renault The Financial Times reported Friday that Nissan and the Japanese government have refused to engage in merger talks with Renault, a French carmaker who owns a 43% stake in the Japanese company. Renault has been trying to make a merger official for a long time, with this being the second time this month Nissan has shot down those efforts.

Previously, Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn had led talks over a merger, however, those stopped last November after he was arrested on charges of financial misconduct. A deal may still happen, but tensions are growing higher at the two companies, with one Renault executive telling FT, "Renault is making one concession after the other on this plan but the goodwill won't last forever." CommerzBank and Deutsche Bank CommerzBank and Deutsche Bank announced Thursday that they've ended merger talks following months of speculation around a deal. The merger would've brought together two banks that control assets worth a combined €2 trillion (around $2.2 trillion) and have a combined market cap of around €26 billion. 

While CommerzBank has reportedly received interest from other banks in the process, including UniCredit and ING Group, Deutsche Bank's outlook appears to be somewhat bleaker at the moment. The bank planned on addressing a lot of financial issues that originated after the global financial crisis through the CommerzBank deal but will now have to go its problems alone (for now). And things aren't necessarily looking up, as Deutsche Bank disclosed decreasing year-over-year revenue and rising costs in its earnings report Friday. Asda and Sainsbury Sainsbury's deal to buy Walmart's Asda unit for £7.3 billion (around $9.4 billion) was blocked Thursday by UK's competition watchdog. The Competition and Markets Authority had criticized the deal in its earlier stages but officially brought down the hammer on the deal, saying the merger of supermarket businesses would have substantially lessened competition at the national and local levels.

In response, Sainsbury CEO Mike Coupe said that blocking the deal was like "effectively taking £1 billion out of customers' pockets," according to BBC News. Two companies said that despite disagreeing with the decision, they will both move on independently from the deal. Walmart has already started looking into strategic options for the unit, according to Bloomberg. Energias de Portugal and China Three Gorges China Three Gorges' €9 billion bid (around $10.1 billion) for Energias de Portugal crumbled Wednesday after shareholders voted down a measure that effectively killed the deal. One of the conditions of CTG's bid was that Portuguese utilities company had to lift its 25% cap on any shareholder's voting rights. Elliott Management, which proposed in March that shareholders vote on the issue, has been lobbying against a CTG acquisition.

A deal by CTG seemed unlikely even without the aid of the activist hedge fund, as the Chinese acquirer still has to obtain 14 of its 16 required regulatory approvals in countries where EDP operates, according to FT.

Featured image via erhui1979/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images