M&A in Australasia - 2023 Q4

(Originally published on January 2, 2024)

It had been a relatively quiet Q4 in Australasia until early December when two big pieces of news dropped.

• The first saw Origin Energy shareholders vote to reject a takeover offer from a consortium led by Brookfield asset partners and EIG. Together with a linked deal involving ConocoPhillips, this wiped nearly US $13 billion from the announced transactions for the year.
• The second came in the form of confirmation that Woodside Energy and Santos were in preliminary discussions about a potential merger. Clearly massive news for the industry and one we will be talking about coming into 2024.

In terms of newly announced deals, Q4 saw five deals, four in Australia and one in Timor-Leste. A transaction value was announced for all of these deals, with a total deal value for these deals of almost US $19 million.

The annual deal count for 2023 is now 18 transactions, with a total deal value of just over US $2.5 billion.