PARIS: It took Total's chief executive and a small group of advisers just days to line up the French energy major's biggest acquisition in almost two decades when it agreed to buy the African assets of U.S. firm Anadarko.
Throwing out the rulebook that expects CEOs to be surrounded by investment bankers and other advisers when dealmaking has become a trademark for the 55-year-old CEO and chairman of Total, who took the helm of the French energy major in 2014. Pouyanne's move to buy Anadarko's assets, the French firm's biggest acquisition since taking over Elf almost two decades ago, will add 5 percent to Total's output by 2025, said Bernstein analysts, who rate Total's shares"outperform".
Total has built up a strong balance sheet under Pouyanne since the 2014 oil price crash, giving him the firepower to swoop on Anadarko's assets. But Total was also able to act swiftly because it has long had its eye on those African operations. Two days after Occidental announced its bid for Anadarko on April 24, Oxy's corporate jet was on the tarmac in Paris.Both firms declined to comment on the reason for the jet's flight to Paris, although an industry source told Reuters the jet was flown in for a meeting with Total.
The deal is also not the first to take investors by surprise. Pouyanne first made a splash in 2017 with the purchase of Maersk's energy business for US$7.5 billion after an unsolicited bid made in a phone call to Ane Maersk Mc-Kinney Uggla, chairwoman of the A.P. Moller Foundation, which has a controlling stake, a corporate source said.