So it turns out banks do have plenty of funds to lend, if you are trying to pull off one of the biggest deals in history. BHP Billiton upped its hostile bid 13 percent for Rio Tinto to $147.4 billion, backed by $55 billion in bank loans. The purchase would be the world’s second-largest takeover behind Vodafone’s $172-billion purchase of Mannesmann in 1999. The risk of a bidding war looms with Rio’s largest shareholder, which Chinese state-run aluminum group Aluminum Corp of China (Chinalco) became last week. Some analysts doubted the sweetened bid would be enough to win Rio and create the world’s third-richest company, ranked behind only Exxon Mobil and General Electric.

Newly appointed Time Warner Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes is widely expected to discuss a plan to spin off the company’s ownership of Time Warner Cable, after the company said profit growth would probably slow in 2008 but may exceed Wall Street estimates. Pressure on Time Warner to do something about its AOL unit also has accelerated after Microsoft Corp’s $45 billion bid last Friday to buy Yahoo Inc. A deal, which would eliminate two potential partners or buyers of AOL but raise the valuations of online advertising assets, will redraw the Internet advertising landscape and consolidate power between Microsoft and Google Inc.

Speculation of an HSBC bid for Societe Generale, in the face of French opposition to a foreign takeover, pushed shares in SocGen up sharply. Shares in France’s second-biggest listed bank jumped as much as 7.8 percent after a U.S. investment bank published a note saying the British bank had enough cash to launch a bid, prising SocGen away from potential domestic predators. “Bid rumors are back, and this time it’s HSBC,” said one trader.