The arithmetic is tricky for a Shell bid for BP today. Next year may be different

Shell says it has ‘no intention’ of making an offer for BP. But if its share price rises, the numbers could work BP is a sitting duck for a takeover bid by most criteria. Its share price has underperformed rivals’ for years. The latest strategic “re-set” was a bits-and-pieces production involving disposals, which do not happen overnight, plus a dilution of green energy ambitions that upset one sub-set of shareholders and didn’t go far enough according to another. Meanwhile, the chair, Helge Lund, is set to exit next year after being pursued by an activist investor.So Shell, the most credible possible bidder by a distance, would be asleep at the wellhead if it were not taking a look and calculating what costs could be removed, which development licences it fancies and how regulators and governments might react. That’s standard stuff, and Shell, one assumes, will have maintained a version of such modelling for about 20 years, which is roughly as long as tales of a combination of the two companies have been running. Continue reading...

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