BG/Origin: Roo awakening

BG has delivered a short, sharp shock to Origin Energy. The UK gas firm was rebuffed at the eleventh hour when it made a $13.8bn (£6.7bn) offer for the Australian coal-seam gas producer in May. Now it has decided to go hostile, launching a bid to shareholders against the wishes of Origin’s board. That’s unusually aggressive, but the right thing to do. Openly hostile bids don’t happen very often. Look at another Australian hostile takeover, that of BHP Billiton for Rio Tinto. BHP spent months pu...