Two Giants Surrender To Each Other: Suncor and Canadian Oil Sands

How times have changed from the days of crude oil’s super-spike. Under the relentless assault of falling prices (Benchmark Brent was under $30 bbl as of this writing) two tar sands giants agree to a friendly merger. Suncor and Canadian Oil Sands shall hold each other as the sky grows black via a $4.24B CN ($2.92B USD) all-share exchange merger, plus debt assumption (0.28 Suncor shares per 1.0 Canadian Oil Sands and $2.4B CN in debt assumed). Come February 5, the deal will be done once 51% of shares have been tendered. When an industry is in tumult, and energy is most certainly that, we shall be reading about all kinds of event-driven investing opportunities and that includes mergers as well as reorganizations and distressed/bankruptcy deals. (Tangential thought: what a time to brace for the IPO of black gold’s ultimate leviathan, Saudi Aramco.)