buyout

Apparently, Warren Buffet can’t always get what he wants. French energy giant Electricite de France bid more than 4.5 billion dollars for a 50 percent stake in Constellation Energy’s nuclear power business. The deal is nearly twice the amount offered by Warren Buffet to purchase all of Constellation.

Warren Buffet originally bid for the company in September for 26.50 a share. Constellation’s stock price has been battered during the financial turmoil of the last few months. The company’s stock has lost over 75 percent of its value during the last year, making it ripe for the taking.

King Pharmaceuticals will purchase Alpharma Inc. for 1.6 billion dollars, or $37/share.

This is not the first time that King has offered to buy Alpharma. The company made an offer of 1.4 billion in August, but Alpharma turned them down immediately. So King Pharmaceuticals decided that a hostile takeover was in order. The company immediately began purchasing Alpharma shares, and recently announced that it had acquired 74 percent of the company. Guess it’s good to be the king.

AT&T said today that it will drop $275 million on Wayport Inc., a privately held Texas company. Wayport already manages AT&T’s Wi-Fi network, but will now officially become part of the AT&T family. AT&T is interested in increasing its number of “hot spots” as more and more people buy Wi-Fi enabled gadgets like the iPhone and BlackBerry.

Delta Air Lines, Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. have just received the Justice Department’s blessing. Now, the two can combine to form the world’s biggest airline. There’s no one left to stop them.

The combined airline will be called Delta, and it will join the third largest and the fifth largest airlines in America. Put them together, you get (let’s just say it again)…the World’s Biggest Airline.

Verizon Communications Inc. may be the second largest wireless company at the moment, but it has its eyes set on number one. Watch your back, AT&T. The communications giant has a little extra spring in its step with out-of-this-world 3rd quarter results. Even in the crummy economy, Verizon was able to increase sales by 4% and profit by 31%.

The company is also just a few months away from completing its takeover of Alltel Corp. When that happens, Verizon will not only have the bragging rights as America’s largest wireless provider by revenue, but also in terms of subscribers. After all this good news, the stock rose by more than ten percent, giving Verizon’s stock its largest jump in eight years. It’s good to be on top.

That’s right, CenturyTel has agreed to acquire Embarq for 5.8 billion dollars.

Never heard of either of those companies? That’s okay. They’re phone companies. You remember…that old-fashioned, local landline thing that used to be all the rage?

As more and more people shift to a wireless-only existence, phone companies have nothing left to do but consolidate. And this Embarq deal look like it was a good idea.

Yahoo plans on cutting 10 percent of its workforce. Well actually, it plans on cutting at least 10 percent of its workforce, meaning that number could grow. And the company plans on doing all of this in the fourth quarter. Yikes! In the end, at least 1,400 people will be cut from Yahoo’s workforce. And all of this is because of disappointing third quarter results.

But this whole thing could have been avoided. The company already laid off more than 1,000 employees earlier this year, but Yahoo continued to hire people and grew right back to its pre-layoff headcount above 14,000.

Exelon Corp made an unsolicited offer for NRG Energy Inc today. The company offered an all stock deal worth 6.2 billion dollars, which is actually a bargain price. That’s because NRG Energy has lost half of its value over the past 2 months. In fact, Exelon energy would have to spend almost double just to build the power plants that it will be gaining if it purchases NRG.

The NRG board is currently reviewing the offer. And if it accepts, the deal would create the largest U.S. energy company in terms of assets. The company would be able to generate enough power for 45 million homes.

Everyone knows that Wall Street is tough and cut-throat, but the latest showdown between Citigroup and Wells Fargo over Wachovia is going to be a bloodbath.

After reaching a $2.16 billion agreement with Citigroup, Wachovia switched to a much sweeter, $15.1 billion deal with Wells Fargo. While Citigroup is not pursuing legal action to keep Wells Fargo from purchasing Wachovia, it’s pulling out its ruthless lawyers from the woodwork and going for the jugular with a $60 billion lawsuit filed against both companies on Monday.

Citigroup must be so upset. Only 4 days after agreeing to buy Wachovia Bank, Citigroup has been outbid. Wells Fargo has stepped in to buy Wachovia for 15.1 billion dollars. The deal, announced today, would create the largest retail bank in the United States. The new company would include over 11,000 branches and almost 800 billion dollars in deposits.

Hewlett Packard bought LeftHand Networks today for 360 million dollars. The move to purchase Lefthand was prompted by the PC market’s shift into virtual servers. PC hardware makers have been scrambling to find complimentary hardware manufacturers who make products for this emerging market. Other HP rivals like Dell have made similar purchases over the last few month as well.

Citigroup has agreed to buy Wachovia Bank’s banking operations. The FDIC was quick to point out that Wachovia did not fail. Wachovia merely had 312 billion dollars in bad loans that threatened the stability of the bank, so the FDIC stepped in and helped orchestrate the buyout deal with Citigroup.

With the purchase, Citigroup will become the nation’s 3rd largest bank. All for the bargain price of 1 dollar a share. You can’t beat that. Citigroup will absorb 42 billion dollars in loses, but the FDIC will cover everything beyond that amount.