Highlights from the Thomson Reuters Investment Banking scorecard:

QATAR PRICES BIGGEST MIDDLE EASTERN BOND ON RECORD
This week’s $7 billion offering from the State of Qatar marked the largest bond offering from a Middle Eastern issuer on record and the second multibillion dollar offering from Qatar this year.  For year-to-date 2009, debt capital markets activity from Middle Eastern issuers totals $38.6 billion, a 120% increase over last year at this time.
The offering, which was led by Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Qatar National Bank, bested the previous Middle Eastern record, a $3.2 billion offering from UAE-based real estate developer, Nakheel Co PJSC.

TECH DEALS DOMINATE RECORD TAIWAN M&A ACTIVITY
Taiwan’s Innolux Display Corp agreed to merge with Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp, a manufacturer of LCD TV panels in a merger valued at $13.1 billion, including debt.  The deal ranks as the largest merger in Taiwan’s history.
M&A activity in Taiwan totals $26.1 billion for year-to-date 2009, nearly five times last year’s total and the largest annual period for M&A activity in Taiwan on record.  High technology mergers account for just over 60% of activity in Taiwan this year, while financials account for $6.1 billion or 23%.

UNITYMEDIA IN BIGGEST BUYOUT EXIT THIS YEAR
Germany’s Unitymedia GmBH, a provider of cable television and internet services was acquired by Englewood, Colorado-based Liberty Global Inc in a deal valued at $5.2 billion.  A portfolio company of BC Partners and Apollo Management LP, the sale marks the biggest M&A exit for a buyout consortium this year.
Worldwide M&A activity for buyout-backed companies totals $75.0 billion for year-to-date 2009, a 58% decrease from last year at this time when activity totaled $177.5 billion.

For the latest deals news from Reuters, click here. And here’s the top stories from the newspapers (some external links may require subscription):

Italian chocolate maker Ferrero could be interested in Cadbury’s gum and candy division, a unit worth about 5 billion euros ($7.4 billion), in a possible joint takeover bid, business daily Il Sole 24 Ore said on Friday.

TPG, Blackstone, Warburg Pincus, BC Partners and Advent are among the first-round bidders for discount retailer Matalan, which is being auctioned with an estimated price tag of about 1.5 billion pounds, the FT said.

Some of Goldman Sachs Group’s largest shareholders have asked the company to cut the size of its bonus pool and pass along more of its profits to investors, the Wall Street Journal said.

With media titans GE and Vivendi still negotiating a deal to bring cable operator Comcast into a mega-media joint venture, a management move at DirecTV is giving dealwatchers a fresh programming alternative.

Yinka Adegoke and Sinead Carew report the appointment of PepsiCo veteran Michael White (pictured below), who has no experience in pay TV, as DirecTV CEO is being read as a sign the company’s parent, Liberty Media, just wants a baby-sitter until its sells the operation in the next couple of years.

Telecom leaders Verizon and AT&T approached Liberty earlier this year, they report. Both have cross-marketing deals with DirecTV and would leapfrog the rest of the market with the addition of DirecTV’s subscriber base. But fears of insurmountable regulatory resistance put those talks on ice.

Liberty Media shareholders are set to vote this morning on a plan to split DirecTV from Liberty Entertainment — a move that Wall Street believes could pave the way for a telephone company to put in a bid for DirecTV, leading to a similar bid for smaller rival Dish Network.

If Comcast gets its content pipeline connected to NBC Universal, the pressure on the telcos to boost subscribers could get them to test the regulatory waters again.

Reckitt Benckiser shares rise 2 percent — so markets are taking notice of the Daily Telegraph’s “latest tale” that the UK group could link up with Colgate-Palmolive. Benckiser is worth roughly $37 billion in the market, Colgate some $41.2 billion, so a deal would be humongous. And this just in: J.P. Morgan Cazenove will become a fully-owned part of J.P. Morgan, as the U.S. investment bank buys out its joint-venture partner Cazenove Group.

Finally, Blackstone Group’s Pinnacle Brands Corp is likely to buy U.S. frozen vegetable company Birds Eye Foods for more than $1.3 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

For the latest deals news from Reuters, click here.

Throughout 2009, United Technologies Corp Chief Executive Louis Chenevert’s mantra was that the diversified U.S. manufacturer was a “willing buyer” with a $2 billion takeover budget and that all it needed was to find a “willing seller.”

Its deal last week to buy General Electric Co’s security business for $1.82 billion answered the question of what the world’s largest maker of elevators and air conditioners was going to do with its M&A budget.

But one question was left unanswered — what of Textron Inc’s Bell helicopter unit? An executive at United Tech’s Sikorsky arm in March said that a merger with Bell was an “interesting hypothesis.”

Textron never commented on the idea.

Shareholders may have gotten their answer to that question on Wednesday.

“There aren’t many helicopter manufacturers out there and the ones that are out there aren’t selling,” Greg Hayes, United Tech’s chief financial officer, told investors, when asked about where the Hartford, Connecticut-based company would be focusing its M&A energy.

Once United Tech closes its takeover of GE’s security arm — which will be its biggest deal since 2005, when it bought Kidde — the company is probably “pretty much done” making big buys in that sector.

It remains interested, however, in smaller, so-called “bolt-on” deals in security, as well as control makers in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning area.

The security deal represented something of an M&A rapprochement between the two Connecticut industrial titans — it was the first major sale of a unit from one to the other since GE tried to box out United Tech in a bid for Honeywell International Inc, which was ultimately quashed by regulators.

But United Tech doesn’t expect a flurry of other unit sales to follow — a merger of GE’s jet engine business and United Tech’s Pratt & Whitney unit, for example, is not in the cards.

“I don’t think GE’s going to sell their business to us, not that I could afford it, probably,” Hayes said.

So far, Cadbury’s hope that Italy’s Ferrero and U.S.-based Hershey will make a counter-bid for the chocolate company look like a pipedream. Cadbury’s stock has ticked up but is still pretty much where it has been since Kraft’s hostile $16.8 offer hit the market. Nobody appears to be buying the idea that a white-chocolate knight will come up with a bid to seriously rival Kraft’s.

The chance of a joint Ferrero-Hershey bid may be slim. Questions about funding commitments and investment restrictions set on Hershey by its charitable trust ownership structure make any deal involving the maker of chocolate kisses a tough sell.

And market sources say that if they were successful, a Ferrero-Hershey tie-up would likely lead to a breakup of Cadbury along geographic lines.

Sigh of relief for Cadbury? Hershey and Ferrero may join forces to launch a rival bid for Kraft’s offer for the British confectioner, a source tells us. On a rather much smaller scale, Cosmo Pharmaceuticals plans to buy rival BioXell for around $40 million, it says. For these and all other Reuters stories on deals, click here.

Plus a look at other media (some links may require subscription):

Hyundai Motor Co is planning to sell off its stake in affiliate Hyundai Mobis Co in a block trade to comply with antitrust rules, according to online media provider eDaily.

Apollo Management, the private equity firm headed by former Drexel Burnham Lambert executive Leon Black, is planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange, the Financial Times says.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp has entered the race to buy a majority stake in Patni Computer Systems, the latest in a string of potential suitors eyeing India’s No. 6 software services firm, the Economic Times says.

Ever wonder how General Motors is holding onto its top talent? 

After a traumatic bankruptcy and series of federal bailouts, the company still owes billions of dollars to the U.S. and Canadian governments. It lost $1.2 billion in its latest quarter, and only sees a slight uptick in auto sales next year.    

The days of banner-year profits and bonuses must seem far off for GM’s executives and finance staff.  GM’s Chairman has already said pay caps imposed on companies by the U.S. government’s pay czar make it tough to hire executives.

While other job opportunities are obviously limited in Detroit, and they may have nowhere better to go in the industry,  the company’s plans for a 2010 IPO has emerged as a key staff retention tool, one of its top executives said on Tuesday.

In comments to the Financial Executives International Current Financial Reporting Issues conference in New York, Nick Cyprus, vice president, controller and chief accounting officer at GM said:

“I have a tool that my peers don’t have. We have an IPO coming up in the next half-a-year to a year or whatever it takes. That’s a great tool, too. Getting the experience of taking General Motors public again is not only a great tool from an experience perspective and resume builder, but it’s also a great experience in that if things work out well there are potential wealth opportunities. In essence, the taxpayers get paid back and people who have delivered get an opportunity to make some money.”

GM  is planning to arrange a revolving line of credit in preparation for an eventual IPO, which would probably be one of the biggest in 2010 if it is able to keep up with its time schedule.

If you were a GM employee, or an investor for that matter, how excited would you be about this IPO?

The mid-size investment bank has named Kenneth Jacobs as CEO and chairman, reinforcing an institutional commitment to dealmaking since the death of legendary Wall Street wizard Bruce Wasserstein. Jacobs has been with the firm for more than two decades and touts an in-the-trenches approach to running the firm. He joined Lazard in 1988, was named a partner in 1991 and became deputy chairman in 2002.

Steven Golub, interim chief executive since Wasserstein’s death, will continue as Lazard vice chairman and chairman of its financial advisory group. Ashish Bhutani and Gary Parr will become directors and vice chairmen. Bhutani will continue as CEO of Lazard Asset Management. Parr is a deputy chairman. Steven Heyer, a director since Lazard’s initial public offering in 2005, will become lead director, a new board position.

While Jacobs’ ascension was widely anticipated, it will be interesting to see if other senior execs stay with the bank, given that the new boss is only 51 and will presumably be in the top spot for some time.

Ferrero — the maker of Nutella — might be considering an offer for an alliance with Cadbury, Il Sole 24 Ore says, saving the British group from Kraft’s clutches. Cadbury shares aren’t moving much, which says something about how the market sees the story. Elsewhere, Austria’s Erste Bank closed its rights issue late on Monday, with demand less than stellar.

The Lehman estate files its long-expected lawsuit against Barclays Capital, according to court documents. And with UBS’s investor day and the Euro Finance Week conference in Frankfurt on elsewhere, all eyes are on Europe’s banks again.

For all other Reuters stories about deals, click here.