How Brookfield's marathon Origin pursuit compares with other M&A sagas
If you thought Origin, EIG and Brookfield have been dancing for a while, they're a long way off some of the longest takeover tangos over the last 10 years.
It's now been more than 400 days since Canadian investment giant Brookfield and US energy investor EIG Partners lobbed their first takeover proposal for Origin Energy. There have been a maze of plot twists since then, culminating in the rejection of a sweetened by on Monday by shareholders.
But while it might feel like the Origin saga is dragged on and on, the deal timeline actually pales in comparison to some of the other marathon corporate M&A situations that have played out on the ASX over the last decade.
According to Dealogic data, the longest time from an announced deal over $100 million to its completion is 1,288 days, when Commonwealth Bank of Australia's life insurance company Colonial Mutual Life Assurance Society was bought by Hong Kong-based personal and business insurer AIA for $2.4 billion.
The acquisition was first announced in September 2017 and finally completed in April 2021 after an industry-wide ASIC investigation into "junk insurance" being sold to Australians.
