Origin cliffhanger gets a late plot twist
Another day, another curveball in the Origin Energy takeover saga which will now extend for at least another 10 days.
It’s fitting that the most important corporate takeover deal in recent memory, which was already shaping up as a cliffhanger, has now experienced a late plot twist reminiscent of Liane Moriarty’s novel Big Little Lies.
Canadian investment giant Brookfield today lobbed a last minute plan B proposal for Origin Energy on the day of the scheme vote for its existing offer to acquire the company. Origin said ahead of today’s vote that this offer from Brookfield and consortium partner EIG, which was loudly opposed by AustralianSuper, was likely to fail.
The plan B proposal, a fallback off-market offer worth up to $9.30 per share, is complex and involves the sale of Origin’s energy markets business to Brookfield for $12 billion, with EIG taking the rest of the company.
Brookfield clearly read the tea leaves ahead of time, and has cleverly designed its double-header such that any shareholder that declines the scheme risks being left with a holding in a company that owns APLNG — Origin’s natural gas extraction business — but crucially, no interest in the energy markets business that is so central to the energy transition, nor any exposure to Origin’s stake in the highly-performing Octopus Energy business in the UK.
