The deal that would become one of the most personally meaningful of Kelcy Warren’s career started with a phone call while he was in New York. Someone told him Sunoco might be looking to sell, and Warren did not wait to react. He flew to Philadelphia within a few hours to help put the deal together, a pace that says a great deal about how he operates when he senses the right opportunity.
A Fast Moving, High Value Deal
That urgency turned into a transaction valued at $5.3 billion, a price that reflected Sunoco’s scale as a crude oil refiner and marketer with decades of operating history. “I couldn’t believe I was doing it,” Warren said of the whirlwind process. “I was like, ‘This is just too good to be true.'”
The speed of the deal was typical of how Kelcy Warren has approached major acquisitions throughout his career, favoring quick decisions once an opportunity looked right rather than lengthy deliberation. That same instinct had already served Energy Transfer well during the wave of asset sales that followed the Enron collapse years earlier, and it would continue to shape the company’s dealmaking long after Sunoco closed.
More Than a Business Transaction
For Warren, the Sunoco deal carried weight beyond its price tag. His father had worked as a pipeline field hand for Sunoco for his entire career and considered it his company, and he died in 1992, two decades before the acquisition closed. “I wish my dad would’ve been around to see that,” Warren told Hart Energy, describing the moment as one of the most rewarding of his professional life.
Kelcy Warren has said sentiment should never be the reason behind an acquisition, but he has also acknowledged that the Sunoco purchase was both a fabulous deal for unitholders and something that mattered to him on a deeply personal level. Refer to this article to learn more.
Find more information about Kelcy Warren on https://www.crunchbase.com/person/kelcy-l-warren