Everything is strategy, and leaking a deal to the press with the classic "said the people familiar who asked not to be identified because the matter isn't public" has a specific purpose.  Bankers love to do that and, when you see the "Concho used advisor so and so..." on the transaction, I can virtually guarantee who that bank will be (DM if you'd like to place a side bet).  It's all about pumping the stock and here's why:  Unlike...

It’s #mergermonday and even the decision of LinkedIn to permanently ban me from the platform for reasons unknown can’t sink my spirits. Devon and WPX are merging in a “merger of equals” where Dave Hager will be named executive chairman on the board and Rick Muncrief will be named President and CEO. More on that later. When we first broke news of the rumored Felix acquisition, for a lot of reasons, I was a fan. More Delaware, more scale, and...

North of the locked down border, two deals were announced that continue to paint the future of the industry. In the first, Obsidian took a swing for Bonterra in an all stock, hostile takeover with a really entertaining letter to the board. While you have to like the effort, hostile takeovers in a world of lackluster shareholder interest at a discount to the closing price, probably isn’t going to be successful. But, as Andy Dufresne said, you better get...

Another day, another deal, and not surprisingly, I like it. SLB is exchanging its onshore U.S. and Canadian hydraulic fracturing business to Liberty Oilfield Services in exchange for 37% of the combined company. And what’s not to like? Liberty is known as one of the better (if not the best) service companies when it comes to frac design, employee engagement and technology. It rationalizes back office G&A to leverage LBRT’s existing staff to run what is now a much smaller...

Another day, another deal. Maybe not the biggest or most impactful, but continually moving in the right direction as Southwestern acquires Montage in a 0 premium all stock deal, and not surprisingly, I like it. First, as advertised the deal will save $30 mm in G&A a year (Montage has $7.5 mm in Q2 so I'll let you do the math). Second, it allows Southwestern to do a 55 mm share offering that should raise $150 mm to pay off...

Between Amazon increasing in value by $116 billion yesterday (more than 66% of all of Chevron's market cap) and President Trump posing in a mask, you may have missed the announcement that Chevron was buying Noble in an all stock deal with for ~$13 billion in what worked out to be a roughly 6% premium to Noble's closing stock price.  This acquisition ends a long drought of deals and puts Chevron back in the news almost 2 years after...

I am so freaking excited! Like breaking the seal at the bar after a few hours of drinking, Chevron has broken the seal on M&A with Noble! Tomorrow, in #technicaltuesday we will dig in but today, some qualitative comments. 1) Noble was highly levered, had disparate and scattered assets around the world (DJ to Israel and West Africa) and needed to do something. 2) All stock deal - as we have talked about at length, 100% of oil and gas companies in the...