** You can’t be a global player without having heard that the Chinese expression for crisis consists of two characters, one meaning danger and the other opportunity. Might a couple of top Chinese banks smell a bit of both in Bear Stearns? A report that investors — including investment guru/granddaddy Warren Buffett – could buy a stake in Bear Stearns sent the troubled investment bank’s stock rocketing 7 percent. Bank of America and Wachovia are also mentioned as possible buyers, but most interesting could be possible bids from China CITIC Bank and China Construction Bank. Chinese banks are flush with dollars thanks to the booming U.S. trade deficit and years of record-setting foreign direct investment. If nothing else, they have plenty of experience with sub-prime loans. 
    
The New York Times report, citing unnamed people briefed on the discussions, said Bear could sell up to 20 percent of itself. “When you have a sophisticated investor and the second wealthiest person in the universe interested in Bear Stearns, then this may be signaling that the company may be about to turn the corner,” said Tom Sowanick, chief investment officer at Clearbrook Financial LLC in Princeton, New Jersey, referring to Buffett. 
       
** Hitachi is considering selling a stake in its hard disk drive arm to a strategic investor to help it turn the loss-making business around, according to sources close to the matter. The news sent shares of Hitachi, Japan’s biggest electronics conglomerate, up 7 percent to a one-month high in its biggest one-day percentage gain in four years. Hitachi has not posted a profit in its hard disk drive business since buying it from IBM for $2 billion in 2002 due to crumbling prices of disk drives. The Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital, and Silver Lake are among funds cited as possible investors, the sources said.
    
** Investors looking at a $25 billion takeover of Sallie Mae are threatening to walk away from the deal, blaming legislation that cut subsidies to student lenders and rocky conditions in the credit market. But consortium leader J.C. Flowers has suggested the buyer group could renegotiate at a lower price, so Sallie Mae may just be headed for another round of negotiations rather than have the deal relegated to the LBO slag heap. The WSJ’s Deal Journal says the Sallie Mae fight could be the “the granddaddy of them all” in terms of battles between troubled companies and their LBO-backed buyers.
    
** Speaking of LBO financing woes, skeptical eyes are being cast at the $22 billion deal for landlord Archstone-Smith Trust. The buyers are now arranging financing and some investors say they are pricing the deal as if the last six months never happened. Number-four U.S. brokerage Lehman Brothers Holdings and property developer Tishman Speyer are trying to entice investors to buy $3.15 billion of loans linked to the buyout. And don’t forget First Data. Banks financing KKR’s acquisition of First Data plan to sell two more pieces of its $13 billion term loan, after small demand for an initial $5 billion portion.
        
** UK-based Insurer Pearl could make a long-anticipated cash offer for Resolution early next month, according to a source close to the matter who said the offer is unlikely to be above a regulatory minimum of 4.5 billion pounds. Resolution announced plans to merge with Friends Provident in July, but Pearl threatened to muscle in on the tie-up, announcing it had built a key stake in Resolution and opposed the deal. If it were to make a bid, Pearl would have to offer at least 660 pence — the highest it paid for Resolution shares, valuing the group at 4.5 billion pounds ($9.06 billion) — but below the current share price.
 
** Top Nordic bank Nordea’s shares shot higher after a newspaper report said rival SEB was poised to buy a 19.9 percent government-held stake in it. Swedish daily Dagens Industri cited two unnamed sources in the report. Sweden’s center-right government said it had no comment on the report, calling it speculation. It does plan to sell some 150 billion crowns ($22.97 billion) in state assets, including its large stake in Nordea, but has yet to announce when or how the sale would be conducted.