Fortune: Siemens bets big on shale with $7.6 billion Dresser-Rand purchase

German company is serious about breaking into the U.S., but is it coming too late to the party? Europe’s largest engineering company wants a piece of the U.S. energy boom, and is ponying up for it pretty handsomely.

Germany’s Siemens AG said Monday it has agreed to buy Dresser Rand Inc. for $7.6 billion,in another big-money vote of confidence in the sustainability of the U.S.’s boom in oil and gas production.

Shareholders in the Houston, Tx.-based company, which makes pumps and compressors mainly for upstream oil and gas companies, might be forgiven for thinking that Christmas has come early. The price of $83 a share is 22% above where the stock was trading only a week ago, before rumors of an impending deal began to leak out, and 45% above where it started the year.
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