NEW YORK (Reuters) – Silicon Valley may be a long way from Wall Street, but they have at least two things in common: Personal connections matter in the pursuit of wealth and neither is a stranger to financial crime.

Just last week, the Street and the Valley were pulled into the same scandal after regulators charged six people, including Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of hedge fund Galleon Group, for crimes related to insider trading.

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Google Inc <GOOG.O> has suspended the services of investor relations firm Market Street Partners — the tiny firm federal investigators said tipped off hedge fund traders on Google’s 2007 earnings.

Lawyers for Market Street Partners on Wednesday said neither the firm nor its current employees were implicated in the Galleon insider trading investigation.

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The tiny investor relations firm whose name has surfaced in the hedge fund insider trading scandal appears to have provided the tip that brought Galleon Group its most profitable trade, and is now also sparking the most questions.

Prosecutors have alleged that before Google Inc announced its second-quarter earnings in July 2007, a tipster told Galleon the Internet giant would announce earnings below market expectations, based on information received from an unidentified Market Street Partners employee.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The sudden death of star dealmaker Bruce Wasserstein on Wednesday has sparked questions about whether the magazines he nurtured will survive in their current form without him.

Wasserstein, who died at the age of 61, considered journalism his second love after investment banking and counted several well-known media properties among his assets, including New York magazine and The Deal LLC.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – General Electric could start to exit a new NBC Universal joint venture with Comcast Corp as soon as three-and-a-half years after the ink is dried, two people familiar with the talks said on Monday.

Comcast is in talks with NBC Universal’s parent company GE to buy a controlling stake in the joint venture that has broadcast and cable channels as well as movies and theme parks

NEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) – When it comes to Cisco Systems
Inc <CSCO.O> and dealmaking, the prevailing sentiment in
Silicon Valley is: You can’t predict what Cisco will buy next,
but you can see why it fits.

The world’s largest maker of corporate networking gear is
known for its voracious dealmaking appetite, buying dozens of
companies every year and digesting them quickly and efficiently
to broaden its already wide-ranging business.

NEW YORK, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Google Inc <GOOG.O> Chief
Executive Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday that the worst of the
advertising recession is over, and pointed to signs of a
recovery in both the U.S. and Europe, sending shares up 3
percent.

Speaking to a group of reporters in New York along with
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Schmidt said that the largest
U.S. Internet search engine has increased its hiring and
investment in anticipation of a recovery.

NEW YORK, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Private equity firm OpenGate
Capital and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman have
dropped out of the bidding for McGraw-Hill Cos Inc’s <MHP.N>
BusinessWeek magazine, people familiar with the matter said,
leaving Bloomberg LP and ZelnickMedia to vie for the
money-losing asset.

OpenGate and Zuckerman, who is also co-founder of real
estate investment trust Boston Properties Inc <BXP.N>, could
have lost interest because McGraw-Hill executives favor a sale
to Bloomberg, the financial news and data provider owned by New
York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the sources said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Swiss digital TV technology company The Kudelski Group <KUD.VX> is trying to take full ownership of OpenTV Corp <OPTV.O> for the second time, with a higher offer that values the interactive TV software maker at $215 million.

The deal, launched on Monday as an all-cash tender offer, offers OpenTV shareholders $1.55 per share for the 94 million outstanding shares that Kudelski does not already own.

NEW YORK, Oct 5 (Reuters) – Brocade Communications Systems
Inc <BRCD.O> has put itself on the block and Hewlett-Packard Co
<HPQ.N> is one of the companies that could be interested in
buying the network equipment maker, people familiar with the
matter said.

Brocade, which sells routers and switches as well as
software to help companies manage data networks, has shopped
itself around to potential buyers for a few weeks, the sources
told Reuters on Monday. They said the process is still in
preliminary stages.