George Soros must see something he likes in Lehman Brothers. Or maybe he just likes a good bargain. Or maybe he’s been talking to activist investor Carl Icahn. Either way, the billionaire financier hiked his stake in the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank to 9.5 million shares as of June 30 from just 10,000 shares, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday. That’s about a 1.4 percent stake. Lehman’s shares are down 75 percent so far this year as it battles through the credit crisis that has battered the balance sheets of many top banks. There was no word from Soros’s Quantum Fund on why he upped the stake, while a Lehman spokesman declined to comment.

Boosting stakes seems to be the play du jour. Hedge fund Harbinger Capital Management has accumulated a 4.9 percent stake in Cablevision Systems Corp, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday, citing regulatory filings. It’s unclear what Harbinger intends to do with its holding, but it may explain some uncharacteristic overtures that Cablevision has made to shareholders in recent months. In July it said it was willing to consider all options, including selling its Rainbow Media unit, home to cable TV networks like AMC and IFC, as well as MSG, which owns venues like Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall. “Everybody was wondering why Jimmy got religion all of a sudden,” one analyst told the Journal.

And one from the trash talk department: Republic Services Inc, the third largest U.S. trash hauler, said on Thursday it had rejected Waste Management Inc’s revised buyout offer. The new proposal continues to undervalue Republic, the company said in a statement. As a result, Republic will not furnish information to or discuss a combination with Waste Management, the biggest U.S. trash hauler. In other words: No thanks.

More deals of the day:

* Irish business services group DCC Plc said it would buy Chevron’s UK oil distribution business for 27.52 million euros ($41 million), in a move analysts saw as an attractive way of boosting earnings.

* Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is in talks to buy German generics drugmaker Stada, Israeli website Globes online reported, sending Stada shares up.

* South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc said it agreed to buy an 8.6 percent stake in Taiwan’s ProMOS Technologies, a stake smaller than the 9.5 percent announced in June.

Barnes & Noble Inc reportedly has read the market and decided to turn the page on an acquisition of rival Borders Group Inc. The largest U.S. specialty bookseller, which had been looking into a bid for Borders, is likely to take a pass because of tight lending markets that would make it difficult to arrange bank financing, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation. Borders, which put itself up for sale in March, has struggled with liquidity issues and has been closing underperforming stores and taking other steps to turn around its business.

Reuters’ DealTalk columnists report that overseas metal and mining companies may have U.S. coal assets in their sights. Indian and Russian firms in particular are looking to snap up assets in order to gain a foothold in the U.S. metallurgical coal market, DealTalk says. Metallurgical coal, also called met or coking coal, is used to make coke, the material used to fuel blast furnaces at steel mills. Two assets that could be on the market are privately owned U.S. coal producers United Coal and Bluestone, one source familiar with the matter said.

Shares in Impala Platinum (Implats), the world’s No. 2 producer of the precious metal, raced 9 percent higher on Thursday partly boosted by market talk that BHP Billiton could make a $26 billion bid for the South African company. South African website www.Miningmx.com said BHP may soon have no choice but to make an offer of at least 200 billion rand ($25.65 billion) for Implats. The article said BHP, the world’s largest producer of metals and minerals, had the world’s best and most diversified portfolio of assets in the resources sector — with the exception of platinum, to which it has no exposure. “At the moment it is pure speculation, but yes, for sure the speculation is affecting the (share) price,” Roy Lamb, a trader at Investec Securities in Johannesburg said. BHP declined to comment.

Other deals of the day:

* QBE Insurance Ltd, Australia’s top insurer by premium income, said it had agreed to acquire U.S. mortgage insurance group PMI’s businesses in Australia and New Zealand and in Asia for a total of A$1.027 billion ($901 million).

* Swiss insurer Swiss Life has taken a stake in German pension sales specialist MLP, upped its holding in rival AWD for 427 million euros ($639.5 million), and will cap share buybacks.

* Dutch Philips Electronics said it has sold its remaining stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which will result in a book gain of 260 million euros ($390 million).

* Thailand’s largest music and entertainment group, GMM Grammy, said it would merge with its 79.75 percent owned subsidiary, GMM Media, as part of a business restructuring.

* Gas Natural raised its potential stake in power generator Union Fenosa to over 50 percent after agreeing to buy a 5.15 percent stake from savings bank Caja de Ahorros Del Mediterraneo (CAM).

CVS Caremark Corp is bolstering its position on the West Coast with its acquisition of rival Longs Drugs Stores Corp. The deal, announced on Tuesday, is worth $2.54 billion and will allow CVS to expand in states like California and broaden the reach of its prescription services. The acquisition of Longs’ 521 stores will also give CVS a leading position in Hawaii, where it doesn’t operate. CVS will pay $71.50 per share for Longs, including its Rx America subsidiary, a prescription benefits management services company with over 8 million members. Longs shares closed at $54.04 before the news on Tuesday, but surged nearly 30 percent in extended trading on the deal. Shares in CVS fell nearly 7 percent on the news.
GM chief Rick Wagoner says there’s significant interest in the auto maker’s planned sale of up to $4 billion of assets as it battles record losses and falling sales, but no deals are expected soon. General Motors Corp is struggling against an accelerating downturn in its home market and high oil prices that have hammered sales of its trucks and SUVs, triggering a $15.5 billion quarterly loss, the third-largest in its 100-year history. Earlier this month, sources told Reuters GM was in talks with India’s Mahindra & Mahindara Ltd and automakers in Russia and China about selling its Hummer brand.

A consortium led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc has agreed to pay about $1.5 billion for a number of ABN AMRO’s private equity assets, the Wall Street Journal said Wednesday. On Monday, Belgian-Dutch financial services group Fortis said that together with Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Spain’s Banco Santander, it had sold a number of ABN AMRO private equity assets to a Goldman Sachs-led consortium. The Journal said Goldman’s investment comprised 32 European companies as well as roughly $450 million in capital to be invested in future deals.
Other deals of the day:

* Australia’s CSL Ltd, the world’s top maker of blood plasma products, is buying smaller U.S. rival Talecris Biotherapeutics Holdings Corp for $3.1 billion, to boost its presence in the fast-growing biopharmaceutical industry.

* Norwegian video-conference systems group Tandberg ASA, a $2 billion company, has been approached by a private equity player interested in preliminary talks on a potential takeover offer, Tandberg said.

* Royal Bank of Scotland has scrapped the planned sale of ABN AMRO’s Australia and New Zealand operations after a high profile suitor withdrew, and plans to integrate them with its existing businesses there.

* South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group said it would combine its asset management unit with a joint venture with BNP Paribas, creating the country’s No. 3 asset manager.

The latest in ten-digit red ink has landed, this time from JPMorgan, which said in a regulatory filing late on Monday that it had lost about $1.5 billion since July. It cited the usual culprits: turmoil in the credit and mortgage markets and wider credit spreads and lower levels of liquidity. JPMorgan’s shares were down more than 4 percent at the open. JPMorgan has written down a total of about $33 billion, and total write-downs since the credit crunch started have been about $341 billion.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s largest bank, said it would bid $3 billion to buy the remaining 35 percent of California’s UnionBanCal, as it looks for growth beyond its softening home market. The purchase represents a significant bet by Mitsubishi UFJ, which is looking to increase its presence in the United States even as the world’s largest economy continues to stumble through the subprime mortgage crisis. Saddled with slow economic growth and a declining population at home, Japanese financials, which have avoided much of the subprime meltdown, are increasingly aiming to boost their small market shares in the West.

Other deals of the day:

* Italy’s Enel said it had bought 10 percent of PT Bayan Resources Tbk for about 138 million euros ($205.5 million) by taking part in the Indonesian coal miner’s initial public offering.

* Adecco said it wants a friendly takeover of British peer Michael Page as the world’s largest staffing firm posted a better-than-expected quarterly net profit and strong margins despite tough economies.

* Singapore steel products maker HG Metal plans to gain control of local rival BRC Asia from the UK’s Acertec, in a deal worth as much as S$100 million ($71 million), sources said.

* The brokerage arm of BNP Paribas, the largest listed French bank, is close to finalizing the acquisition of a Russian brokerage, Pierre Rousseau, chief executive of BNP Securities Asia, told reporters.

** One of the biggest shareholders in Spain’s Reyal Urbis has sold more than half its stake in the property group to Reyal’s chairman and the company itself, stock exchange records showed.

* HSBC Holdings has submitted an updated application to acquire a 51 percent stake in Korea Exchange Bank, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission said.

[Editor’s note: This blog post originally referenced a Reuters article reporting that United Parcel Service had dismissed talk of a $15 billion takeover bid for Dutch rival TNT. That article is wrong and has been withdrawn. Reuters accepts that the UPS executive was not commenting specifically on reports that TNT and UPS were in talks.]

Waste Management Inc, the largest U.S. trash hauler, said on Monday it has raised its rejected bid for rival Republic Services Inc by nearly 10 percent, to $6.73 billion. Under the revised offer, Waste Management would acquire all outstanding shares of Republic for $37.00 each, a 32.6 percent premium to Republic’s share price prior to Waste’s first takeover bid. That’s not likely to bring a smile to the face of Bill Gates, a major Republic shareholder through his investment arm, BGI, who last month asked Waste Management to walk away. BGI didn’t mince words in its letter to Waste Management’s CEO and board: “We can only assume your ill-timed and poorly conceived pursuit of Republic is designed to disrupt what you perceive as a competitive threat to your position in the market.”

GATX Corp is offering more than $3 billion for General Electric Co’s rail car leasing business, a source familiar with the discussions said. GATX is the leading bidder for the unit and negotiations are ongoing, the person said. A GE spokesman declined to comment. GATX was not immediately reachable for comment.

Other deals of the day:

* South Korea said it plans to sell a 49 percent stake in state-owned Incheon International Airport Corp, worth about $2 billion, to global airport operators as part of a drive to privatise and reform state-run companies.

* U.S. energy firm Marathon Oil Corp is selling a 20 percent stake in an Angolan oil field that could fetch almost $2 billion, attracting bids from China’s top three oil firms, India’s ONGC and Brazil’s Petrobras, sources close to the matter said.

* Media, entertainment and events group First Artist Corp said it agreed to acquire U.S.-based advertising agency Spot and Company of Manhattan Inc in a reverse takeover for up to $18.86 million in cash.

* Russia’s Gazprom Neft will offer Kazakhstan a stake in one of its own projects in exchange for a 49 percent stake in Kazakh oil firm MangistauMunaiGas (MMG), a senior Gazprom Neft official said.

* Kazakh miner Kazakhmys has increased its stake in domestic peer Eurasian Natural Resources Corp to 25 percent, but has no plans to launch a bid for now, it said.

* Dubai Mercantile Exchange, a joint venture between Oman, Dubai and the New York Mercantile Exchange, said it had sold a 20 percent stake to several financial institutions and energy traders.

* Debt-ridden French drinks group Belvedere is considering selling its Marie Brizard liqueur unit to refocus on its vodka business, business newspaper Les Echos reported, citing several sources.

* Australian farming cooperative Murray Goulburn has made a solo bid for dairy producer Dairy Farmers after its consortium with Italy’s Parmalat fell apart last week, a source familiar with the situation said.

Yahoo’s Gerry Yang may have thought that giving Carl Icahn a board seat would calm the roiling waters that threatened to pull the chief executive under. But a recount of the vote for its board revealed a strong protest vote against five of nine directors, including Yang. The Internet company said revised vote tallies showed 33.7 percent of votes withheld for Yang, the company’s co-founder. That’s more than twice the opposition to his reappointment to the board as in the disputed first count. Yang has been under pressure for months over failed attempts by Microsoft Corp to buy Yahoo and over questions about his leadership. Analysts were split over whether the recount, while potentially emboldening for critics, was a symbolic embarrassment to the leadership or a new threat to its power. Ahead of the Aug. 1 meeting, Yahoo settled a proxy fight with Icahn, giving the billionaire investor and two members of his proposed slate seats on an expanded board of 11 members instead of the previous nine.

Austrian oil and gas group OMV has called off its unsolicited $23 billion bid offer for Hungarian rival MOL, saying European Union restrictions were too tough to make the deal worthwhile. The move ends an acrimonious year-long standoff between the companies that had begun to irritate some investors and weighed on OMV’s share price. The stock rose nearly 8 percent to a three-week high of 45.60 euros on relief a deal was off. “It was a bad strategic move to make an offer, so this should just narrow the situation,” said Erste Bank analyst Jakub Zidon.

And here’s one from the unwanted advances department: Acquisitive miner XstrataLonmin, unveiled a $10 billion takeover bid for the world’s third-biggest platinum producer, to diversify its business from industrial metals such as copper. South Africa-focused Lonmin swiftly rejected the bid as its shares soared 51 percent to a high of 35 pounds on Wednesday, slightly over Xstrata’s planned offer of 33 pounds a share. Lonmin - and this perhaps is no big surprise — rejected the bid as undervaluing the firm.

Other deals of the day:

* Hunting is to sell its Canadian-based oil and gas division Gibson Energy to private equity firms Riverstone Holdings and Carlyle Group for C$1,270 million ($1.22 billion).

* China’s Tongling Nonferrous Metals said it planned to buy a 51 percent stake in a copper smelter based in Inner Mongolia for 450 million yuan ($65.7 million).

* Newly-formed memory chip maker Numonyx announced a big expansion to its tie-up with South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor, as the former makes a new push into the NAND memory sector.

* Shares in Sony Corp traded higher after the electronics maker said it had agreed to buy Bertelsmann’s 50 percent stake in their Sony BMG music joint venture for around $900 million.

Yahoo chief Jerry Yang has fended off Carl Icahn’s pending proxy fight, but the billionaire activist investor isn’t going away. In the aftermath of a deal struck between the two to end Icahn’s pending proxy fight, eight Yahoo board members are set to stand for re-election, including Roy Bostock, Ronald Burkle and Yang. Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick will stand aside. The board will be expanded to 11 members and include Icahn and two of his candidates. Icahn, who owns an aggregate just under 5 percent of Yahoo, has agreed to withdraw his nominees for consideration at the annual meeting and to vote his Yahoo shares in support of the board’s nominees, but he says he is still in favor of a sale. “While I continue to believe that the sale of the whole company or the sale of its search business in the right transaction must be given full consideration, I share the view that Yahoo’s valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders. I believe this is a good outcome and that we will have a strong working relationship going forward,” Icahn said.

Swiss drugmaker Roche has offered to buy up the rest of Genentech for $43.7 billion in cash. That’s $89 a share, an anemic 9 percent premium if you look at how the market reacted. The stock was up to $96.50 by 0715. Roche owns 55.9 percent of Genentech, the largest biotech by market cap. “We would expect Roche will have to make a significantly higher offer if it is to acquire Genentech,” analysts at Cazenove wrote in a research note. The premium offered by Roche compares with an average of 63 percent, according to Credit Suisse, for recent pharmaceutical buys of biotech companies.

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group Unilever said it had agreed to sell its Bertolli olive oil and vinegar business to Spanish food group Grupo SOS for 630 million euros ($998.4 million). The deal is part of previously announced plans by Unilever, which makes Dove soap and Sunsilk shampoo, to sell non-core businesses with collective turnover of over 2 billion euros. Grupo SOS will acquire the worldwide license for the Bertolli brand in respect of olive oil and premium vinegar.

Other deals of the day:

* German privately owned ball-bearings maker Schaeffler said it was open for constructive talks with German tires-to-brakes maker Continental, for which it has launched an $18 billion takeover bid.

* German steel and metals trader Kloeckner & Co said it would sell its KVT unit for 325 million euros ($515 million) to private equity company Capvis.

* China’s largest motorcycle maker, Lifan Group, which is diversifying into car production, has sold a 13.5 percent stake to AIG for $90 million, two Lifan executives said.

* Infinity Bio-Energy said it bought the shares in Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer Cridasa it does not already own for about $17 million.

* National Foods, the Australian food producer owned by Japan’s Kirin Holdings, has lodged a final bid for Australian dairy producer Dairy Farmers, a source familiar with the situation said.

* French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis will pay A$560 million ($544 million) for the vitamins business of Australia’s Primary Health Care, a source close to the deal said.

* Luminar, Britain’s biggest nightclub operator, said it was interested in a tie-up between its 3D Entertainment venture and Regent Inns, but that Regent had declined to enter talks.

* Russian gas major Gazprom has agreed to buy a 25 percent stake in gas transport firm DalTransGas from the country’s largest oil producer, Rosneft, Gazprom said.

* Shareholders of Indonesia’s PT Bank Niaga and PT Bank Lippo have approved plans to merge the two, Bank Niaga said on its website.

* Ghana’s parliament delayed a decision on a deal that would allow Britain’s Vodaphone buy a 70 percent stake in Ghana Telecom, the country’s third largest mobile phone operator.

* U.S. hedge fund Harbinger remains interested in buying British satellite communications firm Inmarsat, but is suspending talks for now because of the lengthy regulatory process involved, it said.

* South African consumer goods group Tiger Brands said it had reached agreement to sell 50 percent plus 1 share of its unit Adcock Ingram Critical Care to Swiss group Baxter Healthcare.

* Spanish construction company ACS will put its 45 percent stake in electricity group Union Fenosa on sale this week and hopes to close the deal by mid-September, a source close to the deal said.

In what looks like the perfect prescription for growth, Teva Pharmaceutical is buying rival generic drugmaker Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. The over $7 billion deal, plus about $1.5 billion in debt, is aimed at expanding Teva’s leadership in the U.S. market and fortifying its presence in Europe. Israel-based Teva, the world’s largest generic drug company, plans to buy New Jersey-based Barr for $66.50 per share in cash and stock. The price represents a 42 percent premium to Barr’s closing price on Wednesday, the companies said. Teva told analysts in February it was seeking to extend its U.S. market share to 30 percent of generic prescriptions by 2012, up from about 20 percent. Barr is about the fifth-largest generic company by U.S. prescriptions.

Freddie Mac may have its own prescription for keeping itself alive. The mortgage giant is considering raising capital by selling as much as $10 billion in new shares to investors, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report comes after the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve announced a plan on Sunday to shore up the balance sheets and borrowing capabilities of Freddie Mac and sister company Fannie Mae. Such a share sale, which has not yet been determined, could forestall a full government rescue, the WSJ said. The main buyers for any new-stock issues are likely to be existing shareholders worldwide, the paper said, citing one person involved in the discussion.

And what better way to the end the week than with the latest installment of the classic soap opera, As My Yahoo Turns. In the latest episode, a person with knowledge of the plans says Yahoo is unlikely to get into a bidding war over AOL with Microsoft Corp because if Microsoft gets in the way, Yahoo could instead renew talks over News Corp’s Web properties. Yahoo, seeking to shape an independent growth strategy after rebuffing Microsoft’s bid to take it over, has kept in contact with News Corp, the source said, but discussions with Time Warner Inc about AOL appeared further along. Did you get all that? News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said just last week that a deal between his company, which owns the popular MySpace online social network, and Yahoo was “very unlikely.” But that was last week. Once again, stay tuned …

More deals of the day:

** Zentiva advised its shareholders to reject a $2.1 billion takeover offer by France’s Sanofi-Aventis, as investors awaited a higher one in the bidding war with a Czech financial fund.

** The private equity arm of AMP Ltd has received several offers for Jeminex Group, a company in its portfolio with an enterprise value of up to A$400 million ($388 million), two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

** Rambler Media, the British-registered owner of Russia’s Rambler Internet portal, said it has agreed to sell the Begun advertising agency to Google Inc for $140 million.

** Spanish construction firm ACS has agreed to sell its 45.3 percent stake in energy utility Union Fenosa to France’s EDF and a deal may be announced on Friday, Spain’s ABC newspaper reported.

It looks like Merrill Lynch has made up its mind regarding its house-cleaning priorities. The investment bank is expected to announce on Thursday that it will sell its 20 percent stake in Bloomberg LP back to the news and financial data company for about $4.5 billion, a source familiar with the matter said. No one on either side is talking, but selling the Bloomberg stake could help Merrill Chief Executive John Thain raise capital to make up for write-downs related in part to subprime mortgages. It is not immediately clear what role, if any, New York Mayor and Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg (pictured), who still owns about 70 percent of the company, has played in the Merrill transaction. Merrill also owns a substantial stake in money manager BlackRock Inc, but BlackRock, the largest publicly traded asset management company in the United States, said on Thursday that Merrill had decided against selling the stake. Merrill reports earnings later in the day.

Shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries fell nearly 1 percent on Thursday after reports it was in talks to buy rival Barr Phamaceuticals for up to $7.5 billion. TheMarker and Globes financial newspapers reported online overnight that Israel-based Teva, the world’s biggest maker of generic drugs, was in talks to buy New Jersey-based Barr in what would be a further consolidation of the generic drugs industry. TheMarker put the price tag at $7.5 billion, citing capital market sources. That would make it Teva’s biggest acquisition, surpassing the $7.4 billion purchase of Ivax two years ago. Globes cited a price of $7 billion to $7.5 billion. Barr has a market value of $5.1 billion.

And it’s starting to get ugly in Europe. Continental Chief Executive Manfred Wennemer withdrew from the public eye on Thursday to plot his defense against an unwanted $18 billion bid from family-owned Schaeffler Group. If Schaeffler succeeds in buying the group, which is three times its size, it would be the first time a German family business has taken over a company listed on the country’s blue-chip DAX index. But Schaeffler’s advances have stirred resentment at Continental’s headquarters in Hanover, sparking a war of words between both sides. On Wednesday, Continental’s Wennemer hit back at the offer, saying it was too low and warning that the predator could ultimately dismantle Continental. Schaeffler, owned by German billionaire Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, countered it had no such plans, labeling Wennemer’s tone “incomprehensible”.

More deals of the day:

** UK-based buyout firm Doughty Hanson said it agreed to buy a majority stake in TMF, a management and accounting outsourcing services business, for 750 million euros ($1.2 billion).

** Indonesia’s PT Bumi Resources has acquired a majority stake in Australian-listed Herald Resources Ltd after Herald’s board recommended Bumi’s improved A$563 million ($547 million) bid.

** Swiss insurer Zurich Financial Services said it would buy two Brazilian companies, paying up to $241 million and adding to a string of recent smaller acquisitions. Zurich said it would buy 87.35 percent of Companhia de Seguros Minas Brasil and 100 percent of Minas Brasil Seguradora Vida e Previdencia from Banco Mercantil do Brasil.

** Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel’s largest banks, said it had agreed to acquire 78 percent of Russian mid-sized SDM Bank for $111 million.

** Australian mining contractor Ausdrill Ltd has agreed to buy Taylor Wimpey Plc’s mining division in Ghana for $20 million, expanding its business in Africa, coveted by its suitor Macmahon Holdings Ltd.

** Daiichi Sankyo and Ranbaxy Laboratories said the Japanese drugmaker’s deal to take over the Indian firm was “binding and final”, but the statement failed to halt Ranbaxy shares slide.

** Chinese state-owned trading firm Sinosteel has lifted its stake in Australian iron ore explorer Midwest Corp to 54 percent, with its takeover offer due to close.

** Hudson’s Bay Co, the Canadian retailer whose name is synonymous with the country’s frontier past, was bought by the U.S.-based private equity fund that owns the Lord & Taylor department store chain, one of the oldest names in American retailing.

** Bilfinger Berger, Germany’s second largest builder, has bought U.S. industrial services specialist Tepsco from private investor Churchill Equity, it said.

Like a bad soap opera, the Internet storyline is getting more and more convoluted. The tale so far: Microsoft Corp, spurned by Yahoo Inc, is courting Time Warner Inc to allow a union with Internet division AOL. But Yahoo, which turned its back on Microsoft’s $47.5 billion bid, also wants AOL’s hand. These talks have taken on a new urgency ahead of Yahoo’s Aug. 1 shareholders meeting, a source familiar with discussions told Reuters on Tuesday. How either marriage will work is not immediately clear, but any combination will likely redraw the landscape for advertising on the Internet. So why is AOL so attractive? Both Yahoo and Microsoft view it as beneficial to leverage their positions in the Internet marketplace, where search giant Google Inc dominates. Stay tuned.

But good soaps are not only made in America. It seems the Germans are good at them, too. Tires-to-brakes maker Continental rejected Schaeffler Group’s surprise 11.2 billion euro ($17.8 billion) bid, saying only the family owned firm stood to gain from the offer which was too low. Late on Tuesday, the ball-bearing maker announced the terms of its proposed takeover after winning control of more than a third of Continental’s shares through a web of options organized for it discretely by banks. Schaeffler’s bearings are found in London’s landmark Ferris wheel, the London Eye and it also makes high-precision bearing supports for the U.S. space shuttle and the European launch vehicle Ariane, not that that has any bearing on a deal.

Some suitors, however, do get lucky. Mining company Cleveland-Cliffs Inc said on Wednesday it would acquire Alpha Natural Resources Inc for about $10 billion in cash and stock to expand its coal assets. Stockholders of Alpha, an Appalachian coal producer, will receive 0.95 of a Cleveland-Cliffs common share and $22.23 in cash for each of their common shares when the union is completed. Based on closing stock prices on Tuesday, the deal values Alpha at $128.12 per share, a premium of 35 percent, the companies said in a statement. The combined company will be renamed Cliffs Natural Resources and will include nine iron ore facilities and more than 60 coal mines located across North America, South America and Australia.

More deals of the day:

** Shareholders of utilities Suez and Gaz de France are set to approve a long-delayed 100-billion euro ($159.5 billion) merger, creating Europe’s second-largest electricity and gas group.

** The Co-Operative Group has agreed a long-awaited deal to buy Somerfield for 1.57 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) to strengthen its position as Britain’s fifth-biggest food retailer.

** Russian real estate company LSR said it had acquired a property developer in Yekaterinburg in the Urals region for 100 million euros ($159.5 million).

** Bank Hapoalim, one of Israel’s largest banks, said it was in advanced talks to buy at least 75 percent of Russian mid-sized SDM Bank at a value of $142 million.

** Irish healthcare services company United Drug said it had bought U.S. packaging maker Sharp Corporation for $99 million in cash.

** The board of Australian energy firm Roma Petroleum NL said shareholders should accept the revised A$49.4 million ($48.4 million) takeover offer from Queensland Gas Co Ltd.

** Parsvnath Developers Ltd said it will invest 4 billion rupees for a 38 percent stake in the Nanocity project in northern India.

** Shares in SK Telecom, South Korea’s top mobile carrier, fell early after a CNBC report that it was negotiating to buy Sprint Nextel Corp , the No. 3 U.S. mobile service.

** Swiss engineering group ABB said it will acquire U.S. transformer company Kuhlman Electric Corporation from private equity firm Carlyle Group for an undisclosed sum.

** EPIC Energy Ltd said it had acquired Sathian Sun Power Systems, a solar energy products supplier based in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, for an undisclosed sum.

** Airbus said it has agreed to set up a venture with Harbin Aircraft Industry Group (HAIG), the parent of Hafei Aviation Industry Co, to make aircraft components.