Baker Hughes will quickly put to use the $3.5 billion breakup fee it’ll get from Halliburton after the two called off their merger. The oil drilling giant says, it’ll buy back stock and debt. And it’ll cut costs to produce half a billion dollars in savings by year-end.
Evercore ISI analyst James West said, “Independently, Baker will quickly become a turnaround story as it is now able to right-size the company for a difficult 2016.”
The world‘s second and third largest oil services companies scrapped their $28 billion deal Sunday after U.S. and European antitrust regulators expressed opposition to their proposed marriage. It’s the latest in a series of collapsed deals due to antitrust issues. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the merger would have “left many oilfield service markets in the hands of a duopoly.”
Shares of Halliburton rose in early trading and Baker Hughes declined. Both stocks have fallen more than 19 percent since they had agreed to merge in 2014.
