E*Trade Financial Corp’s $2.55 billion private equity cash infusion from investors led by Citadel Investment Group staves off strategic buyers who wanted to strip off everything but the brokerage business, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that two of the online broker’s primary rivals, TD Ameritrade Holding and Charles Schwab, considered buying the company. It said about 30 bidders made overtures to E*Trade, of which eight or so were taken seriously. Citadel has done well with distressed companies. It bought Amaranth Advisors, which went bust last year on a bad bet on oil. The Chicago Tribune reported last week that Citadel has returned a gain of 27 percent year to date in what’s shaping up to be the Chicago-based hedge fund’s second straight showing of double-digit returns. 
    
Is National Australia Bank paying too much for privately owned Great Western Bank? The $798 million bid to extend Australia’s biggest bank’s reach into the U.S. agricultural lending business appears to value Great Western at about 20 times 2008 earnings, which is seen as around double other regional lenders. In the largest foreign purchase yet for a Chinese insurer, Ping An Insurance bought a 4.2 percent stake in Dutch-Belgian financial services firm Fortis for $2.7 billion, making it Fortis’s top shareholder. And another hot deal in biofuels: VeraSun Energy is bidding for US BioEnergy to expand its ethanol capacity, in an all stock deal that values US BioEnergy at about $657 million.