Energy giants Woodside and Santos are in discussions over a potential merger that could lead to the creation of an $80 billion behemoth.
Woodside has a market cap of about $57 billion, while South Australia’s largest company, Adelaide-based Santos, sits at around $21 billion.
In an announcement to the ASX last evening, the company said discussions were
‘incomplete’ with ‘no certainty’ they’d lead to a deal.
We’ll find out soon how the market reacts to this news.
Futures are predicting a .2 (.21 per cent) per cent dip as the ASX200 opens for the final day of the trading week.
In the northern hemisphere overnight, tech stocks rallied with the Nasdaq jumping 1.3 per cent, the S&P 500 gaining .8 per cent and the Dow Jones .2 per cent.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, saw a significant surge of more than six per cent after releasing its new Gemini AI model, although it later retraced some of its gains.
American multinational semiconductor company, AMD also performed strongly, registering an increase of nearly 10 per cent in the wake of unveiling its MI300 data centre chip.
The Aussie dollar is buying 66 US cents, Bitcoin has dipped more than 2 per cent to just above $65k.
Iron ore has lifted to $133.50; Crude oil is just below $70. Gold is above the $2030 mark and natural gas is relatively flat at $2.56.
Copper has broken its losing streak, which saw it fall five per cent in three days, it’s been trading up nearly 2 per cent ($3.78) and uranium has been trading just below $81.50 ($81.45)