Vicki Hollub, Big Oil’s Big Dealmaker
Her eleventh-hour hustle secured Occidental’s $55 billion takeover of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in August.
Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum Corp.
Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
In April, Anadarko rebuffed a bid from Occidental in favor of a lower one from Chevron Corp., partly because Anadarko wasn’t convinced Hollub could win shareholder approval for the purchase. Hollub thought that if she could decrease the proportion of the offer that was in stock—her company initially proposed 60% stock, 40% cash—she wouldn’t need shareholders to vote yes.
So she flew to Omaha, pitched the deal to Warren Buffett, and came away with a $10 billion investment from Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (Buffett got high guaranteed dividends on preferred shares.) Then she went to France and presold Anadarko’s African assets, which included a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique, to Total SA for an additional $8.8 billion. With what was now a 78% cash bid, Anadarko reversed course and accepted Hollub’s offer. The move consolidated Occidental’s position as the top producer in the Permian Basin, the world’s biggest shale field. Edited excerpts from her conversation with Bloomberg’s Kevin Crowley: