The pipeline giant Energy Transfer Equity said on Wednesday that it had called off a contentious deal with the Williams Companies after a Delaware judge ruled last week that the transaction could be terminated.
Energy Transfer, based in Dallas, had sought for months to kill the deal as a sharp decline in the energy markets last year made the cash-and-stock transaction untenable. Talks between the two companies were so fraught that one analyst described the situation as “the Cuban missile crisis of mergers.”
