In September Williams finally relented and accepted a buyout/merger offer from Energy Transfer Equity (see Williams Accepts ETE’s “Indecent Proposal” – Price Went Down $10B). Deals like this one, with ETE paying $37.7 billion for Williams, take time to complete. There are lots of regulatory hoops to jump through. The two companies said in their original announcement they expect the deal will be done in “the first half of 2016.” Smart move on their part to not commit to a specific date too early. From an announcement issued yesterday, we now have a much better idea of the timing. The announcement says the two companies are complying with certain regulatory requests and that they won’t get hitched before March 18, 2016. Which means if all goes well in regulatory hell between now and then, we’ll have a March wedding…
