With this sorts of deals there is always a lot of self interest...

With this sorts of deals there is always a lot of self interest at play, ie not all board members of both Co's will get a spot if the merger goes ahead, some of the lucrative executive wages will be lost if merger goes ahead etc, etc you get my point....the real winners will be the SH's of both Co's if the mergers goes ahead.

Sure 20mil shares is nice to get, but he handed over 20% of Gulf, now MMI has over 22% of Gulf and a fairly big say in Gulf's future, assuming merger doesn't go ahead, so that's not a bad position for MMI to have such a large say over it's neighbor....but once again it's hard to argue that a merger will be the most lucrative option for most SH's of both Co's...all that needs to be worked out now are the deals between the big boys, so majority of the will be happy, some of them will get the short end of the deal, but as long as most of them can work it out