Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s nearly $70 billion offer for Britain’s BG Group PLC may be the starting gun for a wave of oil deals that analysts and bankers have been predicting since crude prices started to slump in June. “This could mark the beginning of a M&A rave, much like the one we saw in the late 1990s,” Augustin Eden, research analyst at Accendo Markets, said in a note. BG, with a market cap of about $46 billion, is likely the largest of the potential prey: small, midsize oil-and-gas companies that have been punished by oil prices that have halved over the past […]