As we previously reported, last Friday a Delaware court ruled that Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) has the right to terminate its merger agreement with Williams (see Court Says ETE Can Terminate Williams Merger; Williams Votes Today). But as we also said, at that time ETE had not officially announced they were terminating the merger. They now have. Yesterday ETE said they have filed the official paperwork to dump the merger/takeover of Williams. Williams is continuing to litigate to try and force ETE to do the deal by appealing the court’s decision (see Williams Shareholders Vote “For” ETE Merger; Appeal Court Ruling). This deal is as dead as a doornail and everyone knows it–including Williams. What’s going on is legal posturing so Williams can try and extract money from ETE over the now-abandoned takeover attempt. In some ways we don’t blame Williams–they resisted ETE’s overtures for nine months before caving and agreeing. Of course, Williams caved and agreed because there are evil corporate raiders on the board pressuring the company to do so. As we’ve maintained all along–no one comes out of this smelling pretty…
