Messy Breakup: Halliburton to Pay Baker Hughes $3.5 Billion After Failed Merger

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

Halliburton, the oil services provider few look at fondly, paid rival firm Baker Hughes $3.5 billion in terminations fees after an attempted merger was shot down from every direction. Halliburton is the second largest such company, with Baker Hughes in third (first goes to industry giant Schlumberger). Once valued at $34.6 billion in 2014, this merger would now have only been worth $28 billion given the precipitous fall of oil over the last two years. The oil industry’s near collapse was a major factor leading to the scuttled deal. Halliburton and Baker Hughes both rely on oil company contracts; and, given that oil was, until recently, too expensive to pull out of the ground for many producers, their services saw little request. But the oil industry is slowly recovering. So what else killed this deal? Hint: the government. [more...]