4. Long-awaited mergers After much hemming and hawing from Carl Icahn and others, Occidental Petroleum this week finalized its $38 billion takeover of rival Anadarko Petroleum after 99% of Anadarko shareholders approved the deal. In another transaction many months in the making, semiconductor company Broadcom agreed late Thursday to buy the enterprise cybersecurity business of Symantec for $10.7 billion, making lemonade out of the lemons that were left when Broadcom and Symantec abandoned discussions last month for a much larger merger. 5.