McDermott International shareholders are to vote today on the company’s proposed acquisition of CB&I: one of two partners on the prime contractor for the embattled plutonium disposal plant being built at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The vote is part of a special shareholders meeting, the Houston-based engineering and construction company said in a Monday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. One significant shareholder, Los Angeles-based asset management firm Hotchkis & Wiley, has already signaled it will oppose the proposed $6-billion, all-stock merger.
The companies announced the proposed takeover in December, and secured U.S. antitrust approval in January. The combined company would be led by McDermott President and CEO David Dickson and have a combined annual revenue of about $10 billion, with a roughly $14.5-billion backlog.
Woodlands, Texas-based energy technology provider CB&I is the majority partner of CB&I AREVA MOX Services, which is building DOE’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The plant, which the agency wants to cancel, is designed to turn 34 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel.
MOX Services sued the the Department of Energy in 2016 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over the planned cancellation, seeking $200 million in fees and damages. The case is not yet scheduled for trial, though Judge Thomas Wheeler is set to hear oral arguments May 17 over a portion of the financial award MOX Services seeks.
