The three-way combination, originally announced in August, had been expected to generate savings of $600 million.
In 1999, Mr. Bouton thwarted a move by BNP to forge a three-way combination with Paribas.
The French treasury backed a three-way combination of the major French banks BNP, Paribas and Société Générale, but only BNP and Paribas wound up merging.
"It is a very complex three-way combination at a low premium involving substantial risk for William Hill shareholders: execution risk, integration risk and risks of materially increased leverage.
The three-way combination of Time Warner, AOL and EMI would have been difficult to get past antitrust regulators, and the EMI deal was called off to appease them.
The only combination of parties that comes remotely near that, under the current polls, is a three-way combination involving Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP.
In 1917 Jones successfully combined two single-cross hybrid corn varieties in a double cross, or four-way combination, that resulted in a new, uniform, highly productive variety.
Describing the potential three-way combination as unprecedented in size and scope, Mike Shillaker, an analyst with UBS Warburg in London, said he expected a successful completion of the talks to "pave the way for global consolidation".
At a news conference at Alcan's headquarters in Montreal, Mr. Bougie said he would meet with Algroup investors to convince them of the growth opportunities presented by the two-way combination.
Based on 1999 results, today's two-way combination would have annual revenue of $12.4 billion, and rank second in size to Alcoa of the United States, the global market leader.
