HOUSTON, May 30 (UPI) -- Kinder Morgan Inc.'s leaders want to take the big Houston pipeline company private in a $13.5 billion deal.
Offering an 18-percent premium to the company's Friday closing price, the proposed management takeover, which represents a total transaction value of about $22 billion would be the largest such buyout, The Wall Street Journal said Tuesday. If successful in the deal, KMI would add $14.5 billion in debt.
Richard Kinder, KMI founder and chief executive, create KMI about 10 years ago with roughly $40 million in assets he bought from Enron Corp., which he left in late 1996 after Kenneth Lay passed him over in his search for a chief executive.
KMI owns an interest in or operates 43,000 miles of pipelines that transport primarily natural gas, crude oil, petroleum products and carbon dioxide and more than 150 terminals that store, transfer and handle products like gasoline and coal.
