It’s fast, it’s mean, and it’s sexy.

With a base price of nearly $90,000, it happens to be the priciest model in Chrysler’s otherwise quotidian product line-up.

Now it’s up for auction.

At a time when General Motors is trying to sell the Hummer SUV line – and not getting very far – it must take courage to put something on the block.

But unlike the lumbering, gas guzzling Hummer line, Viper may not be such a tough sell.

Unlike a Hummer, the Viper is not designed for off-road use. It’s no paragon of fuel-efficiency either, but it gives you a unique, luxurious handcrafted vehicle.

Another difference: Hummer’s sales plunged 40 percent in the first half of this year. Viper’s sales have risen 111 percent so far. Okay, that exorbitant rise is mainly due to a weak comparison — Viper’s 2007 sales had plunged amid a transition to a new model.  But sales of Viper, like most cars in the high-end category, are not as affected by the macroeconomic factors that hurt vehicles sales (gas prices, interest rates, housing market). Sales of Hummer, which gives you 9 to 14 miles a gallon in fuel (in)efficiency are severely dependent on oil prices.

So Viper sales are likely to stay stable.

Moreover, it’s a much smaller asset than Hummer. Analysts have said it will likely fetch $100 million. (Yes, it’s a small deal but any move the U.S. automakers make in these turbulent times is being closely watched. )

Unlike Hummer, which is likely to be sold for much less than it’s worth, the Viper business will appeal to a whole host of investors because we aren’t talking billions of dollars. The Indian automakers, Chinese automakers, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds or a wealthy entrepreneur — can all afford it. Easily.

Chrysler, majority-owned by Cerberus Capital Management, has faced scrutiny over its ability to ride out a downturn in U.S. auto sales that many analysts expect will stretch through 2009. It lost $1.6 billion in 2007. Selling brands and models it can do without is crucial to its survival and eventual health.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli has said last week the automaker has heard from several potential suitors, but he’s not naming names.

A steep downturn in auto sales is finally forcing the Big Three to take a harder look at their businesses and start getting rid of assets to shore up cash and cut costs. How successful any of these sales will be remains to be seen. But Viper is certainly likely to be an easier — and quicker — sale than Hummer.

The Lehman Brothers Back-To-School conference isn’t really about selling to kids, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to UST, the tobacco company that owns Joe Camel, when CEO Murray Kessler (pictured left) lit out of the conference to try to close a deal with suitor Altria. The New York Times says the deal is worth $10 billion. Putting the maker of Copenhagen and Skoal firmly in the cheek of the cigarette giant has been talked about long enough to wear a hockey-puck sized circle in the back pocket of any banker’s jeans. (For those of you uninitiated in smokeless tobacco, that’s the mark a tin of tobacco makes in your favorite Levis). Sources said in February that a deal between the two may be only months away, but the two sides were haggling over price. The deal would be Altria’s first major purchase since it split from its international operations, now known as Philip Morris International. The FT’s Alphaville notes that UST owns Ste Michelle Wine Estates, one of the 10 largest producers of premium wines in the US. Another product that would be poorly placed at a back-to-school conference.

Other deals of the day:

* A consortium led by Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp is poised to win an auction to buy Singapore’s Temasek-owned Senoko Power, with an offer of more than S$3.5 billion ($2.4 billion), sources said.

* GDF Suez is in exclusive talks with the Dutch NAM oil venture, owned by Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil, to buy offshore assets worth 1.075 billion euros ($1.54 billion), the French utility said.

* Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery said it will buy operating assets worth 3.02 billion yuan ($442 million) from its parent via a private placement.

* French utility EDF has moved closer to a deal to buy nuclear generator British Energy after fruitful talks with some of the company’s biggest investors, the Financial Times said.

* Dell Inc is trying to sell computer factories around the world in efforts to cut cost and improve profitability, the Wall Street Journal said.

* Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips, said it may buy flash memory maker SanDisk, which is valued at $3.2 billion, in a deal that could reshape a struggling industry.

Fundraising for private equity buyout funds is getting tougher.

Thomson Reuters data for the first half of the year showed 59 buyout funds raised $35 billion, down from 74 funds totaling $62 billion the first half of 2008.

The immediate future looks no easier. Blackstone’s first close on its fund — which Private Equity Intelligence says has a target of $20 billion — was $7 billion, sources previously told Reuters. But it isn’t going so well, according to a Wall Street Journal report that said California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, intends to invest just $250 million into the fund, significantly less than the $1.7 billion it committed to the firm’s prior fund.

Blackstone has one of the biggest brand names in the business and its success in raising this fund will be closely watched for others in the market.

Nobody knows better than South Korea how elusive the floor can be when markets are crying fire-sale. Pushed to the wall during the Asia Crisis a decade ago, the country’s banks had their assets priced in the pennies-on-the-dollar range. Here now, with the shoe squarely on the other foot, is Korea Asset Management, a government debt clearer that says its purchase of illiquid Merrill Lynch debt securities is faltering over price. Local media reported in July that Kamco planned to raise up to 2 trillion won ($1.98 billion) to buy U.S. non-performing loans with Shinhan Bank and Mirae Asset Securities. Kamco had said it was in the process of raising about $1 billion to buy distressed mortgage assets from U.S. banks and expected double-digit returns from its investments. Hardly the kind of buying clout that Merrill faced when it agreed to sell $30.6 billion of collateralized debt obligations to a Lone Star affiliate in July for 22 cents on the dollar. If nothing else, execs at Lehman Brothers will be watching this high-stakes haggling with much nervous interest as they negotiate with another South Korean state-owned institution, Korea Development Bank, over a possible joint investment in the CDO-laden U.S. investment bank.

Other deals of the day:

* Novolipetsk Steel, the Russian steel maker owned by billionaire Vladimir Lisin, has agreed to pay $400 million in cash to acquire U.S. hot-rolled steel maker Beta Steel and expand its presence in North America.

* InBev is to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Sept. 29 to vote on its planned $52 billion takeover of Anheuser Busch and related matters.

* Private equity firm Advent International has taken a majority stake in Swiss duty-free retailer Dufry by means of a share swap that combines it with the U.S. firm’s airport retailer Hudson. Dufry, which already held an 11.2 percent stake in Hudson that it bought in April, said it was swapping Hudson’s common stock for Dufry equity and refinancing its approximately $390 million in debt. The total value of Hudson’s equity is $446 million.

Coke pulled off the single largest takeover in Chinese history overnight, offering to buy juice maker Huiyuan for three times what the company was worth. Braving a notoriously difficult foreign M&A environment, where the state dominates the corporate sector and pumps out reams of regulatory red tape and where nationalistic pride often triggers protests when foreign firms gain influence over domestic firms. Since capitalism is good these days, that premium should go a long way toward suppressing any nationalistic distaste with the deal. Interesting to note that Chinese inbound corporate deals so far are up 30 percent from a year ago, to $15.3 billion.

Hedge fund manager Ospraie Management will close its flagship fund after it plunged 27 percent in August on losses in energy, mining and natural resources equity holdings, in one of the biggest ever closures of a commodities-focused hedge fund. The closure of the fund, announced by the firm’s founder Dwight Anderson in a letter to investors on Tuesday, could be more bad news for Lehman Brothers, which took a 20 percent stake in the hedge fund manager in 2005. One expert said the closure of the fund, which at the time of the letter’s writing had lost 38.59 percent this year, may also have played a role in bringing down U.S. stocks yesterday, which fell after initially climbing more than 1 percent. Lehman shares were down more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Other deals of the day:

* South Korea’s military savings fund would consider joining Korea Development Bank in a bid for Lehman Brothers if KDB made such an offer, as now appears a good time for U.S. investments, the fund’s chairman said.

* Friends Provident, Britain’s smallest blue-chip life insurer, will not sell its Lombard and F&C units if it cannot get a good price, recently appointed chief executive Trevor Matthews said.

* Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will likely fold one of its small consumer finance units into affiliate Acom, a newspaper said, the latest move by a Japanese bank to strengthen its position in the struggling consumer lending market. Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest bank, will seek to merge unlisted DC Cash One with Acom, the Nikkei newspaper said.

* Irish supermarket group Superquinn has received six expressions of interest from potential bidders, including Britain’s Asda and J Sainsbury, the Irish Times newspaper said.

It’s sweatervests versus suits. Posterboards versus Excel spreadsheets. A lot of money versus a lot more money…it all boils down to consultants versus investment bankers. Need to know more? The smackdown between the two professions is chronicled on a hip-hop style video 

circulating Wall Street.

Ties and pocket protectors fly as both sides assert their dominance in the video, “Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banker.”

The video was posted Thursday on the wildly-popular blog Leveraged Sell-Out, which spoofs the antics of Wall Street’s ingenues.

The video helps promote a book written by Leveraged Sell-Out’s creator, Princeton graduate Amit Chatwani.

So who wins the hip-hop showdown? You decide–

Consultant: “You’re playing with Excel, doing nothing but grunt work. I’m analyzing both qualitative AND quantitative research (OH!).”

Banker: “I got a house in the Hamptons and a penthouse loft.

But you’ve got intangibles, is that why your skills are so soft?

–Deepa Seetharaman

This won’t be a revelation to private equity bankers — but August was officially quiet for deals.

The summer month typically marks a dearth of transactions as bankers head out to the beach, but last month was exceptionally slow.

The dollar value of deals involving private equity sank to the lowest for four years, $21.7 billion globally on 206 deals, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Two years ago, private equity deals during the August heat — which already post-dated the initial popping of the credit bubble — amounted to $47 billion.

With just months to go before bonuses are calculated, the pressure’s surely on to make up some of the dealflow before year end.

Belgian brewer InBev is planning to sell its Korean beer business, Oriental Brewery, sources said on Tuesday, allowing it raise up to $2 billion for its planned $52 billion for its takeover of Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos. InBev, set to become the world’s largest brewer after the deal, has said it was considering the disposal of non-core assets.

With the credit crunch into its second year, we can expect to see private equity sidelined while it attempts to restore credibility, the rise of workout M&A as the weak economy pushes companies over the edge and a number bank failures, writes Steven Davidoff, a commentator for the New York Times’ DealBook. Davidoff also says we can also look forward to workouts or bailouts for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and some “transformative transaction” for Lehman Brothers.

Other deals of the day:

** Nokia said Samsung Electronics has accepted its offer to buy out its stake in smartphone software company Symbian. In June, Nokia said it would buy out other shareholders in Symbian for about $410 million.

** Liberty Shipping, a drybulk operator based in Lake Success, N.Y., plans to buy International Shipholding Corp for about $308 million.

Turns out, Korea Development Bank is in talks with Lehman Brothers - but now, after the government threw cold water on prospects for a solo KDB investment, the question has become which local bank will be partnered up with the state-run bank for this bold investment. KDB was to be a “cheerleader” rather than the main player in any deal, the government said. KDB CEO, Min Euoo-sung, headed Lehman’s local operations until earlier this year, so he’s well placed to wield the pom-poms. Investors there are nervous - which they should be given Lehman’s more-than $60 billion of mortgage and mortgage security exposure. South Korean bank shares tumbled today as markets pondered which mighty institution might be encouraged to step up. Names to keep in mind are Shinhan Financial Group, Woori Finance Holdings and Hana Financial Group. How much Lehman might a KDB-backed venture buy? Min said one possibility was for KDB to form a consortium with private banks to jointly buy Lehman. Pricing remains an issue, of course. The Telegraph reported Lehman had stepped up talks with KDB to raise as much as $6 billion in a share sale that could be concluded this week.

Other deals of the day:

* Natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy said it agreed to sell a 25 percent interest in its Fayetteville Shale assets in Arkansas for $1.9 billion to BP America, a unit of BP.

* The world’s third biggest platinum producer Lonmin said a merger with Xstrata would lead to major synergy benefits and the firm would like to hold talks with its hostile suitor if a formal bid is made at a higher level.

* French utility group GDF Suez said it would buy U.S. electricity provider FirstLight Power Enterprises. GDF gave no financial details in a statement, but according to industry sources quoted by Le Figaro newspaper the deal would be worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.91 billion).

With tens of billions in the bank collecting dust since its failed bid for Yahoo, and the elusive promise of the Internet still beckoning, Microsoft returned to the market for Internet search businesses with a $486 million purchase of Greenfield Online, the U.S.-listed owner of European price comparison website ciao.com. The buy is meant to help lift Microsoft out of fifth place in the European search market by giving a boost to its Live Search platform. Google’s monster lead in the search market is a whopping 62 percent and 79 percent in Europe, according to the most recent data published by Web usage tracker ComScore. Microsoft has a 2 percent market share in Europe and 9 percent worldwide, behind both Google and Yahoo. In Europe, Microsoft is also outranked by online auction site eBay and Russia’s Yandex.

Four large hedge funds, all Huntsman shareholders, have proposed a plan to finance at least $500 million of the $6.5 billion buyout of the chemical company by a unit of Apollo Global Management. Hedge funds Citadel Investment Group, D.E. Shaw & Co, MatlinPatterson Global Advisers and Pentwater Growth Fund, and as of this morning, the Huntsman family, have agreed to team up on the financing plan, but Apollo’s Hexion Specialty Chemicals unit rejected the plan last night, saying Huntsman’s increased debt and decreased earnings since the deal was struck in July 2007 would no longer make a combined company solvent. “We are not seeking to renegotiate this transaction,” Hexion responded in a statement. “We are seeking to terminate it, and obtain judicial confirmation that Hexion has no obligation to pursue the acquisition or to pay Huntsman a termination fee.”

Allianz is set to sell Dresdner Bank to Commerzbank, sources with direct knowledge of the matter say, in a deal that will fuse Germany’s second- and third-biggest lenders. The deal, to be announced as soon as this weekend, will see Commerzbank take a 51 percent stake in Dresdner and buy the rest later, the sources said. Taking over Dresdner, which analysts estimate to be worth about 9 billion euros ($13 billion), will create a group to rival flagship lender Deutsche Bank and change the face of banking in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy. It will give Commerzbank a badly needed leg up in its home market, which is dominated by state not-for-profit lenders and allow Allianz to end an unhappy marriage that unsuccessfully tried to match investment bankers with insurance salesmen. The deal is likely to result in heavy job cuts, which would have been avoided had Allianz chosen to sell to another would-be buyer, China Development Bank.

Bain Capital and Carlyle Group are among the private equity firms through to the next round of bidding for a stake in the telecom unit being spun out of Hong Kong’s PCCW, according to sources. A deal, expected to come late this year, could fetch $2.5 billion. Two sources involved in the deal said Goldman Sachs’s private equity arm was considering joining TPG Capital in its own offer for the unit, though they could not confirm that the two had officially linked up. Sources also said Apax Partners moved into the next round of bids, due in mid to late October. PCCW, Hong Kong’s former monopoly fixed-line carrier, said in May it planned to fold its core media and telecoms businesses into a separate firm called HKT and sell 45 percent of the new company. At the time, PCCW shares had dropped 90 percent since 2000.

U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group is seeking a new investor for Willcom, a Japanese mobile phone operator needing $1.8 billion to develop new technology services, four people familiar with the matter said. Carlyle, which owns 60 percent of unlisted Willcom, has hired Merrill Lynch, to find an investor to purchase new shares in Willcom, they said, asking not to be identified because the information is not public. Carlyle is also willing to sell part of its stake, the financial sources said. Electronic parts maker Kyocera owns 30 percent of Willcom and KDDI holds 10 percent. Willcom said in November it would need the money by the end of 2015 to develop new PHS technology to better compete against NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank. In December, it won one of two licenses from the government to provide next-generation wireless Internet access.

Other deals of the day:

* Australia’s takeover regulator said it has received an application from Britain’s BG Group requesting more information from Origin Energy to support Origin’s rejection of BG’s A$13.8 billion ($11.9 billion) takeover bid.

* The fate of a $2.7 billion deal involving Malayan Banking taking over Bank Internasional Indonesia is in Malaysia’s hands and the capital markets watchdog will not make exceptions to existing rules, Indonesia’s regulator said.

* Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the world’s biggest bank by market value, is buying 100 percent of Russian bank Rosevrobank for between $800 million and $850 million, a newspaper reported.

* Dutch insurer Aegon said it is buying 50 percent of the insurance business of Spain’s Caixa Terrassa for 190 million euros ($281 million) as it seeks newer markets to fuel growth.

* Japanese video game maker Square Enix said it seeks to buy more than half of game developer Tecmo to improve its global competitiveness, in a deal worth at least $102 million.

* British oil and gas services firm Petrofac said it has bought production technology firm Caltec for a maximum 30 million pounds ($54.85 million).

* Hallin Marine Subsea International, which provides subsea services to the oil and gas industry, said it has bought engineering consultant to the energy sector, Prospect Flow Solutions, for up to 4.65 million pounds ($8.50 million).

* Turkish Airlines said its management board had decided to bid for a 49 percent stake in Bosnia’s BH Airlines.