On the 8 th of August 2019 a major oil company completed an acquisition that could well be looked back on as the worst oil deal of the decade. Since that day, the company’s stock price has crashed 85 percent and hit its lowest level since 2001. The deal, of course, was Occidental Petroleum’s acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum. This megadeal, valued at $55 billion, pitted two of the world’s most famous investors against each other. Warren Buffet, who backed the deal with a $10 billion pledge, found himself in disagreement with billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn who attempted to stop the merger from going ahead. It is now clear that Buffett got this one badly wrong in what is turning out to be his worst mistake since merging Heinz with Kraft Foods in 2015. Icahn has since written an open letter to Occidental shareholders suggesting that the company’s top […]