** Echoes of Citigroup’s chunky warning at the beginning of the week are still ringing in bank analysts’ ears. Did they fully captured Citi’s troubles with high-risk, high-reward loans made to unrated and junk-rated companies? “Can Citi really know what the size of the write-offs should be?” said Punk Ziegel analyst Dick Bove. “All they know is they got a bunch of loans which they put on their books which were inappropriately underwritten in the first place.”
    
** Henderson Land Development is buying the prized Hong Kong & China Gas Co stake from a subsidiary for $5.5 billion. It had failed twice in five years to take the subsidiary, Henderson Investment, private as shareholders unhappy with terms torpedoed both deals. Hong Kong & China Gas’s stock, on an uptrend from around $14.50 in 2005, has spent the summer more or less stuck around HK$18. The news sent it up nearly 9 percent. Henderson Land is up around 15 percent since mid-July.
    
** UK mortgage bank Northern Rock’s advisers are in talks with buyout firm JC Flowers over a rescue bid and U.S. firm Cerberus is also interested, according to sources familiar with the situation. News that at least two potential bidders remain interested gave Northern Rock’s battered shares a boost, lifting them over 14 percent at one stage. JC Flowers has secured more than 15 billion pounds ($30.6 billion) in funding that could be used in a takeover, a source close to the matter said.
 
** ABN AMRO’s period of uncertainty will end soon with deadlines approaching for two rival bidders for the bank, the Dutch lender’s Chief Executive Rijkman Groenink told employees in a memo. Groenink said he expected the winner to become clear by October 19. The consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Santander is expected to emerge victorious. It is mostly-cash 71 billion-euro ($100.6 billion) bid, more than 10 billion euros higher than a rival, mostly-share bid by Barclays. The deadline for the Barclays offer, worth 32.52 euros per share on Wednesday, is Thursday and the consortium’s offer, worth 37.95 euros per share, ends on Friday.
 
** A Washington Group International investor has sued to stop the company’s proposed acquisition by URS Corp, adding to the list of shareholders who think the deal is unfair. According to the lawsuit, Washington Group, the engineering and construction company, and its board of directors “failed to choose financial projections that fairly valued the company’s worth to maximize shareholder value.” Schultze, a hedge fund that holds about 3 percent of Washington Group’s shares, said Washington Group also failed to seek other buyers who may have paid more. Hedge fund Greenlight Capital Inc, which owns about 10 percent of Washington Group, has also said that the deal undervalues the company.
 
** The Qatar Investment Authority wants Sweden’s regulator to speed up a decision on its suitability as an owner of OMX so it comes at the same time as a ruling on rival Borse Dubai, according to Dagens Industri. Quoting from Qatar’s approval application, the newspaper said that failure to give a judgment about its and Dubai’s suitability as owners of OMX at the same time would disadvantage OMX shareholders. Qatar Holding is a QIA subsidiary. Earlier in the day the QIA, through its Qatar Holding subsidiary, applied for approval to raise its stake in OMX to over 10 percent. Qatar has said it owns 9.98 percent of OMX shares.
    
** “Chastened bull” Henry Blodget writes in the New York Times’ DealBook that hopes the subprime mess will not spread and that the falling price of money will fire up the collapsing deal market could be premature. “Unfortunately, we are not off the hook yet. It is still possible that we are in the early stages of a painful, extended decline.”
    
** The Wall Street Journal’s DealJournal has a nifty graphic showing just how big the boom and bust has been in M&A this year, peaking at the $89.68 billion ABN Amro deal in April, and skidding to last week’s $2.2 bln Huawei, 3Com deal.