Deal to take Kinder Morgan private likely to be accepted

[MrPrax]

Deal to take Kinder Morgan private likely to be accepted, analysts say

HOUSTON (AP) - A proposal to purchase pipeline operator Kinder Morgan Inc. (NYSE:KMI) for about $13.4 billion US and take it private will more than likely be accepted by the company but possibly at a higher price, analysts said Tuesday.

The company's chairman and CEO, Richard Kinder, has teamed up with senior managers and outside investors to buy Kinder Morgan. Kinder sent a letter to the Houston-based company's board on Sunday offering to pay $100 US a share for all outstanding shares, an 18.5 per cent premium above Friday's $84.41 US closing price.

The deal also includes the assumption of more than $8 billion US in debt, bringing its total value to almost $22 billion.

"I think it's a great deal for the people who are buying the company. It's a good deal for shareholders. I think there is still more value out there as a public company that the management group is going to have to beat," said Robert Lane, an analyst with Sanders Morris Harris.

Canoe

KINDER MORGAN BUYOUT PROPOSED
Company's chairman wants to take pipeline giant private in $13 billion deal

By TOM FOWLER


When Richard Kinder left Enron in late 1996 he set out to build an empire out of the staid yet steady energy pipeline business.

Nearly 10 years later he plans to take Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc., where he is chairman and chief executive, private in a $13.5 billion transaction that could be one of the largest such buyouts in U.S. corporate history.
<snip>
Kinder, the former chief operating officer of Enron Corp., started what would become Kinder Morgan in early 1997 with Bill Morgan, another former Enron executive. Today the enterprise, which includes three closely tied, publicly traded companies, is worth nearly $24 billion.

"We're not a complicated company to understand. We're just a gigantic toll road," Kinder said in explaining why the pipeline company's fortunes don't rise and fall with oil and gas prices. "We just get paid a fee to move products, and we don't care what gets moved down the highway."

Houston Chronicle

Well there you have it...if you told people in BC three years ago that the Texas oilmen that set up Enron would control the entire oil and gas industry in BC privately without any possible public input whatsoever, people would have said you your nutz and talkin' conspiracy and that leftwing anti-business crap and your going to ruin the Olympics, etc etc.

It's nice to have the last laugh, again...

So any bets that this was the grift all along since the ink just dried on the Kinder-Morgan sale of Terasen Gas or do people think Kinder just woke up one morning and said, 'Hey we should go private'...

Oh man...

[Spazito]

1. The Campbell government is big into privatization...

so this is no surprise, to me anyway. They okayed the deal KNOWING this was the way to privatize/sell off B.C.'s natural resources to the corporations in the U.S.

I am glad I no longer live in B.C. where my natural gas bills were through the roof before the sale, I can just imagine what they will be for those in B.C. once the privatization is complete, yikes.

[IntravenousDemilo]

2. Once the gas prices reach the stratosphere due to privatization,

that will be the cue for the Carole James government to nationalize (or at least the provincial version of "nationalize") the entire industry.

[Spazito]

4. Yes, the NDP may well form the government after the next election

if they don't do anything too bad. Campbell isn't too popular at all.

[GirlinContempt]

3. I read a couple of really good articles about Kinder Morgan

here:

http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/23/KinderMorgan/
http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/09/13/Kindermorgan/