** Nasdaq and Borse Dubai are teaming up to buy OMX. As part of the deal, Borse Dubai will end up with a 20 percent stake in Nasdaq and Nasdaq will take a strategic stake in Dubai International Financial Exchange, which it said will be rebranded with the Nasdaq name and licensed to use Nasdaq and OMX market technology. Nasdaq will take Borse Dubai’s existing stake in OMX. Borse Dubai will also buy Nasdaq’s 28 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange but will continue with its 230 Swedish crown per share offer for OMX, which values OMX at around $4 billion, while Nasdaq will withdraw its current cash-and-shares bid. ”The combination will create the largest global network of exchanges and exchange customers linked by technology,” said Nasdaq Chief Executive Bob Greifeld. Qatar’s state investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, promptly responded by buying a 20 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange and urged OMX shareholders to take no action on the Borse Dubai offer pending a further statement. 
 
** Investment guru Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sold $41 million worth of shares in PetroChina on Sept. 6, the fund’s third sale of stock in Asia’s top oil and gas producer announced in two months. Berkshire sold just over 28 million shares at an average price of HK$11.47 apiece, trimming its stake in PetroChina to 8.93 percent from 9.07 percent of the firm’s free-floating shares. Berkshire built up its stake in PetroChina in April 2003 at an average price of about HK$1.60 per share, becoming the second-biggest shareholder in what is now the world’s No. 2 oil firm by market capitalization, after Exxon Mobil.
 
** British bank Barclays’ bid for ABN AMRO, one of two offers for the Dutch bank, is too low to be recommended to shareholders, according to ABN’s chief executive. “We cannot ask shareholders to pay the difference from the consortium’s bid,” Rijkman Groenink told an extraordinary meeting of shareholders called to discuss the offers. Barclays’ part-cash, part-share bid is currently worth about 59 billion euros ($82.52 billion), while a rival, mostly cash bid from a consortium grouping Royal Bank of Scotland, Belgian-Dutch financial group Fortis and Spain’s Santander is worth about 70 billion euros. 
    
** Buyout firms are handling the pressure from the current credit crunch fairly well, but some leveraged buyouts will not get done as a result, according to Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein. Most announced deals waiting for financing will be done on revised terms, he said, although it is too early to tell exactly how the logjam of leveraged buyout debt will play out. “We got a wake up call. A good wake up call. Life isn’t going to be so easy always and I think the industry has responded reasonably well. If we had a wake up call and we were in a recession, we’d be worse off.” This morning, Carlyle agreed to sell a 7.5 percent stake in itself to Abu Dhabi, the latest in a run of Middle Eastern deals.
    
** Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s biggest bank, said it will buy $1 billion worth of shares from Mitsubishi UFJ Nicos to bolster the credit card unit’s financial health. Japan’s consumer finance industry has suffered heavy losses and restructuring, due to new laws that will lower the maximum interest rate and court rulings that have forced lenders to repay some interest charges to their customers.
    
** German airline Air Berlin said it would buy charter carrier Condor in a two-stage deal that could land travel firm Thomas Cook a near 30 percent stake in Air Berlin. Air Berlin’s fleet is set to become Germany’s second- and Europe’s fifth-biggest airline and give it a similar scale to low-cost rivals Ryanair and easyJet. 
    
** HSBC is not considering acquisitions in Japan and will instead focus on growth by itself as it rolls out retail banking in the world’s second-largest economy, HSBC Chairman Stephen Green said. He added HSBC was “very comfortable” with its holding in Hang Seng Bank, indicating that it might not give in to an activist shareholder’s request that it consider raising its stake in the Hong Kong lender.
    
** Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding once again extended its offer to acquire Ventana Medical Systems, and Ventana swiftly rejected the offer, calling it “grossly inadequate.” Roche extended the offer until Nov. 1. It launched a roughly $3 billion hostile tender offer for Ventana in June. 
    
** The Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut may make it easier for First Data Corp to sell a $5 billion loan for its leveraged buyout — but might not help a bigger backlog of deals that still need financing. “I think the Fed action did give investors a level of comfort that liquidity was likely returning to the system, and it really has been returning,” said John Fenn, a high-yield strategist at Citigroup in New York. Still, he said, “This is not a silver bullet. We’re not going to see all of a sudden $200 billion to $300 billion of paper clear.”
 
** Banks and private-equity firms could be headed for a wave of legal battles, the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog speculates, citing recent disagreements over the funding some of smaller deals, like Blackstone Group’s $1.7 billion buyout of PHH. “Will Blackstone, for example, stand still if its deal for PHH falls through because J.P. Morgan Chase and Lehman Brothers Holdings balked at financing it?”