Ensco, Pride Combine to Create the World's Second Largest Offshore Driller

Ensco PLC (NYSE: ESV ), a U.K.-based energy company, announced yesterday (Monday) that it agreed to buy Pride International Inc. (NYSE: PDE ), for $7.3 billion in cash and stock in a deal that will create the world's second-largest offshore driller. The transaction represents a further transformation of the U.S. offshore drilling industry, which is still struggling to recover from last year's explosion of Transocean Ltd.'s (NYSE: RIG ) Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and spewed roughly 4.8 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. Transocean, based in Vernier, Switzerland, is the world's largest offshore driller. Ensco will pay $41.60 a share for Texas-based Pride, a 21% premium to its closing price on Friday. The purchase would be the largest for Ensco, and is the second-largest acquisition of a U.S. oil services company in the last year.