I was rather surprised yesterday to see an e-mail from Ogilvy PR pitching an interview with Dave Booth, the Chairman President of Global Sales and Marketing at Computer Sciences Corp, only a couple of hours after Xerox announced its $6.4 billion planned purchase of Affiliated Computer Services.

After all, CSC -- an IT services company that competes with ACS, and has a market value of $8.1 billion -- was the first company that came to bankers' and analysts' minds when I asked them who else could be in play, as tech companies look to buy into new growth opportunities.

Given how market sentiment works, any comments from the chief senior executive of a potential acquisition target like CSC could easily move the stock. As a rule, that's why, companies typically don't comment on rumor or speculation about themselves. So naturally, an on-the-record interview with the CSC chairman executive wasn't something I could pass up.

The e-mail offered:

...(T)he opportunity to hear comments from Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC). As you might know, CSC is a marketplace contrarian that can offer a POV on the other side of the coin - staying independent.
CSC anticipates greater interest from those clients that value the objectivity of a technology-independent approach. With one less independent firm in the marketplace, CSC's position is strengthened as a global, technology-independent option for clients.

I let Ogilvy know of my interest, and waited, and followed up, and waited. By the late afternoon, I figured the pitch was too good to be true because CSC had thought the better of it. Sure enough, the e-mail that eventually turned up in my inbox, said: "CSC now prefers not to comment."

Wonder if that was a PR learning experience.

(Photo: CSC.com)

Update: A CSC spokesman called on Tuesday to say Dave Booth is not chairman, but president of global sales and marketing at CSC. I have updated this post to include the correct title.

(Update: Dell PR misspoke about Johnson's responsibilities, and we've made changes below as indicated.)

Dell, which announced plans to buy Perot Systems for $3.9 billion on Monday, completed the deal without help from an executive in charge of mergers and acquisitions.

It's a touchy subject for Dell, which earlier this year named David Johnson to its executive team, poaching him from IBM where he served as head of M&A. IBM filed a lawsuit, saying that Johnson violated a non-compete agreement by taking the job with Dell. But IBM failed to persuade a judge to bar Johnson from working at Dell while the litigation is pending.

CEO Michael Dell told reporters on a conference call that Johnson was not involved in the Perot transaction "in any way," noting that the two companies had held discussions back in 2007, while Johnson was still at IBM. "It was not a new idea," Dell said.  But the discussions heated up again over the summer, after Johnson joined Dell.

Reuters asked Dell spokesman David Frink how Dell could negotiate a $3.9 billion deal, its biggest ever, without involvement from Johnson, its head of M&A. He said that Michael Dell and Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden had led a group of other executives who worked on the deal.

He added: "We don't have a head of M&A."

When asked what Johnson does for Dell, Frink said: "We don't spending a lot of time talking about what he is focused on"

What is his title? "Head of corporate planning and development," Frink said.

Does that area include M&A? "Yes."

Frink initially said Johnson's job included M&A, but he called back later to say Johnson had no such responsibility. The M&A group reports to Chief Financial Officer Gladden, he added. There still is no head of M&A.

Debt-ridden Hollywood studio MGM, whose library is home to such gems as the Rocky and James Bond flicks, has replaced CEO Harry Sloan, appointing a three person team to run the show: famed turnaround ace Stephen Cooper, motion pictures group boss Mary Parent, and CFO Bedi Singh.

Sloan is out as CEO but the veteran Hollywood businessman, who took the helm a few months after MGM's 2005 buyout by a group of private equity and media investors,  will stay on MGM as non-executive chairman of the studio. The studio has been grappling with a massive $3.5 billion debt load stemming from its 2005 buyout by private equity and media firms.

Along with the debt load, MGM , which has not had a major film release since Tom Cruise's "Valkyrie"  in December, has been struggling like other Hollywood studios with  lining up fresh film financing due to the economic crunch and dropping DVD sales.

Cooper,  well-known for  turning around big troubled companies Krispy Kreme and Enron, has been appointed to restructure MGM's  balance sheet to enable Parent to make movies.

MGM is due next to release a remake of the 1980's hit "Fame" and to start production on "Red Dawn" another remake, in September.

Sloan left a private law practice in 1983 and has been a media executive and investor since. He invested and ran three media companies, including SBS Broadcasting, Lions Gate Entertainment and New World Entertainment.

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Data Domain has formally rejected EMC’s $1.8 billion cash takeover bid in favor of a 1.9 $billion cash and stock deal it has signed with NetApp. EMC is expected to come back with a higher offer. It has a much bigger war chest than NetApp, and could stand to win the war for market share even if it loses the bidding battle.

In its rejection of the hostile EMC bid, Data Domain said EMC had not agreed to enter into standstill or confidentiality agreements required by its NetApp deal and that it believed EMC’s offer was less likely to close than NetApp’s. It also pointed to break-up fees with NetApp.

Sources told us on Friday that EMC plans to raise its bid before Data Doman shareholders vote on the matter. No date for such a vote has yet been set.

EMC could offer as much as $35 per share, sources say — $5 above its current offer. EMC’s strategy, according to one of the sources who has knowledge of its thinking, is to win Data Domain or drive the price so high that the acquisition weakens NetApp’s finances, Jim Finkle and Anupreeta Das report.

The view from the sidelines is that the only threat to EMC, which has $7.1 billion in cash, including $4 billion in the United States, is U.S. government intervention on anti-trust grounds.

It may never get that far. The government may be in charge, but cash is king, and some investors are already leaning toward EMC and its bigger cash payout.

Most top technology executives are used to juggling businesses worth hundred of millions of dollars, yen or euros. But this week at the Reuters Technology Summit, we asked: if we gave you $1 million to invest anywhere -- but not in your own company -- where would you spend it?

INTERNET / STARTUPS

If you want the quick answer, I would invest it in Twitter.  I'm sorry that we weren't in it. I don't know where it's going and it would be a fun ride.

-- Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

I would love to work more with some of these interesting startups like kiva.org that are developing interesting and innovative ways to create micro-lending programs for folks around the world.

I've a couple of friends and I would like to invest in their companies, little start-ups. One of them is called Trazzler and the other is called Fluther. One is an innovative travel startup and the other is a service that helps people get answers to questions they need.

I'm not a real big stock guy. Maybe a little Apple, a little Google -- companies I use every single day so why not invest in them?

-- Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone

It's stuff in our industry. The most vibrant industry is ours. We're complaining but the reality is we're making money. I would literally go after a couple of smaller companies that are up and coming. (Such as) Lala. It's iTunes without having to download the client. It's a really neat job. Check it out. You take music on the go. It's a really nice design.

-- Yahoo Inc  Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh

I have done some angel investing and what I have found in angel investing is it hasn't been because I was excited about the sector, it was because I was excited about the person. So I don't know that I could pick a sector, but if I see the right people, that is where I would put the $1 million.

-- NetSuite Inc Chief Executive Zach Nelson

ENERGY

I would put it in the hands of scientists who are trying to discover the next energy alternative. By giving them more R&D dollars, we fuel opportunities for higher education. We hopefully allow them to buy better supercomputers and that could improve the computer industry's short-term prospects and it could obviously help discover the next generation of energy source that could change humanity altogether.

-- Nvidia Corp Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang

There are many attractive companies in the environmental energy sector. Especially in Japan, technologies are advanced and there are a lot of companies that established business strategies and models from early on. Also, health and safety will be more valued in the future, so healthcare is a very important area.

-- Konica Minolta Holdings Inc Senior Executive Officer Shoei Yamana

MIXED PORTFOLIOS

"Because I'm 60, I would probably put half in corporate bonds, spread them around, get a nice interest rate on them. And I would probably put some into energy because I am a long-term believer that energy costs are going to continue to climb, and I think they've gotten depressed. And then I would put it into consumer electronics stocks and consumer non-durables. I'm a believer that consumers will come back and will spend again. So I would invest in those things.

-- Corning Inc Chief Financial Officer Jim Flaws

The financial sector will come back. I think some smart investment in the financial sector makes sense. Tech will be one of the first industries to emerge from this because that spending is important to the growth and cost agendas of companies.
I'd probably put a third in natural resources probably oil and gas. The fact is it is a diminishing asset. That is probably going to create supply problems that will tend to drive up the value of those problems.

-- Dell President of Large Enterprise Steve Schuckenbrock

I'd invest in a company whose business is not doing well. Stocks of companies that are making a lot of money don't have much room to grow. There are many sectors that are not well performing but won't ever vanish. For example, chipmakers may be struggling, but that's only because of the supply/demand balance. When demand comes back, the business will pick up again.
Also, materials and infrastructure industries are interesting. There are countries like China that still need to improve infrastructure, so I think it would be interesting to invest in those.

-- Capcom Co Ltd CFO Kazuhiko Abe

HEALTHCARE

Personally, I still think health care. I think the pharmaceutical companies have been beaten down a lot...As population ages, everybody needs more medical help. Pharmaceuticals, drugs are a big part of it. Short term, I think the dollar is going to fluctuate. I wouldn't sell dollars for the long term. If I had a million dollars, I would probably move to a very beaten down currency at this point, maybe Australian dollars, and then back into U.S. dollars in a year or two.

-- Sybase Chief Executive John Chen

I think that the area that is worth investing is in the healthcare area. Small start-up companies that are looking to wirelessly enable health. This whole area of letting people monitor their own health and give them feedback and let others have access. I think there is just a huge revolution in healthcare coming with high-tech. When people can give you a pill, and track it and see inside of your body and tell you what's really wrong with you...I think that whole area is about to just mushroom. It defies economic cycles. People get sick or get ill regardless of economic cycles.

-- AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega

MISCELLANEOUS

I like very much these electronic readers. We actually started that several years back, we were ahead of the time, and we found that publishers, textbook publishers, were not very receptive. The area of flexible paper and digital paper and publishing. We're not there yet. But (Amazon's) Kindle is stepping in the right direction. There is a lot of innovation in that space. But it's got to be like a $49.95 product, not a $300 or $400. It's got to be for the masses. It's got to bring educational qualities to kids in the Amazon, 1,000 miles away from civilization.

-- SanDisk Chief Executive Eli Harari

I'd say Apple. You wouldn't be able to find any other company in the world that can do everything from OS to hardware to services like Apple does. It is a company that has a potential to keep offering new services. Apple's ability to develop products is incomparably better than others.

-- Gree Inc CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka

Based on what I saw on CNBC, I think I would put it in Hormel. Since I saw the sales of the Hormel chili and Spam have increased recently because of the economy. It's as good an idea as any.

-- Advanced Micro Devices Inc CEO Dirk Meyer

I'd put it in the bank probably. Definitely not in the automotive industry.

-- Marvell Technology Group CEO Sehat Sutardja

You know, being pretty conservative in nature, it's either invested in TI or sitting in the most conservative way possible. I get more than enough excitement in my daily life than needing excitement with investments on the side on that front.

-- Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton

It seemed only a bit odd that media star Arianna Huffington was the guest host on CNBC the day the all-important stress test results were due. Not to play down her credentials in media or commentary circles, but where were the celebrated bank analysts, the corporate chieftains and the investment gurus who so routinely enjoy a dose of the limelight on America’s Business Channel?

Wasn’t this the perfect day for a newsmaker rather than a news talker? The Huffington Post founder has been a good reality check on market cheerleaders who live on CNBC, but on Stress-Test Thursday, the less-than-casual viewer expects insiders with insight. It tasted like something strange and exotic had made its way into the DealZone coffee machine.

Then disgraced former New York Governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer joined the fray, and the slightly odd became surreal. Spitzer, who casually noted he was invited to the show (hint, hint), gave a spirited view from the nosebleed seats, far back from the federal policymakers’ bench.

Forget all this stress test stuff — what about Spitzer’s attempt at resurrection? Anchor Joe Kernen asked whether Spitzer the AG would have prosecuted Spitzer the governor and Spitzer the guest legal expert answered no, arguing that issues of judgment are more important than issues of law.

This should be equally true for the banks, Spitzer said. But the banks’ transgressions were far more damaging to many more people than Spitzer’s own. It’s hard to believe moral suasion and limiting access to cheap funds would have been enough to persuade greedy bankers to act more responsibly. Certainly, shareholders would not have rewarded them for behaving better while others were making a killing selling toxic investments.

DealZone commends CNBC’s producers and guest bookers for creative thinking. While the stress test results are not due until late this afternoon, so much has been leaked already that the minutiae still to come will probably numb the minds of even the hardiest financial news junkies. With no news to break, the Huffington/Spitzer show turned out to be refreshingly watchable. Indeed, who understands a stress test better than Eliot Spitzer?

Deals of the Day:

* Anheuser-Busch InBev said it agreed to sell its South Korean Oriental Brewery to private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co for $1.8 billion, allowing the world’s largest brewer to repay debt.

* Global miner Rio Tinto Ltd/Plc has not talked to Chinese state-owned metals firm Chinalco about revising a planned $19.5 billion tie-up, and still believes the deal makes sense.

* Australian blood-products and vaccines maker CSL said U.S. competition regulators had yet to make a decision on its proposed $3.1 billion takeover of smaller rival Talecris Biotherapeutics Holdings Corp.

* Australian brewer Lion Nathan, which has agreed to a $2.5 billion takeover by Japanese brewer Kirin, halted trade in its shares on Thursday on concerns the confidentiality of its talks with Kirin may have been breached.

* U.S. coal miner Peabody Energy and Anglo-Swiss miner Xstrata plan to bid for a majority stake in Indonesian coal miner PT Berau Coal in a deal that may be valued at around $1 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the deal said.

* Porsche Automobil Holding SE stock fell as much as 17 percent after the sports car maker scrapped attempts to take over Volkswagen and agreed to explore a merger with Europe’s biggest carmaker.

* Magna International has so far presented a more concrete proposal on General Motors unit Opel to the German carmaker than Fiat, Opel’s supervisory board member Armin Schild told Reuters.

(PHOTO: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer stands next to his wife Silda Wall Spitzer as he announces his resignation at his office in New York March 12, 2008. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

Rick Santelli's extended tryout process to join the more vitriolic commentary-mongers at Fox News continues. Santelli already raised eyebrows and network blood pressure at CNBC when he aired his "tea party" comments on live TV, raising questions among media obsessives about whether he was in the tank for the Republican Party.

Today's incident was tamer in the sense that he only accused one of his colleagues, senior economics reporter Steve Liesman, of asking stupid questions. That's not as big an insult to a civilian as it is to a journalist, who hopes to get paid for asking smart questions. (And someone with Liesman's extensive business journalism pedigree probably asks fewer stupid questions than most.)

The background: Six of the CNBC gang were on TV discussing whether Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis to keep quiet about losses at Merrill Lynch when Bank of America was also under pressure from the government to buy Merrill. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said last month that Bernanke and Paulson threatened Lewis with losing his job if he didn't push the acquisition through to, essentially, save the U.S. and world financial systems.

One CNBC reporter, Dennis Kneale, wondered aloud if it would be illegal for, say, a lawyer to recommend to Lewis that he violate "Reg FD" disclosure laws that would more or less deceive Bank of America's shareholders into accepting the deal, knowing that if they were aware of Merrill's troubled condition, they would oppose it with their very lives.

Then this happened (Beware: Everyone was speaking over everyone else, so we might have missed a word or two here and there):

Liesman: Ask the question in a more compelling way: 'I want you to save the world and not disclose.'

Santelli: Come on, Steve! Are we going to come up with excuses to break the rules? To break the law? You sound like Richard Nixon! Who did you vote for, Steve?

Liesman: All I was posing was the ethical issue here. If it helps out to stabilize the system, is there a compelling reason to not disclose? I am not advocating that.

Santelli: You don't break rules in a crisis condition!

Liesman: If you want to blow a gasket on that, Rick, well then, blow it on somebody else -- not me!

Santelli: Well, then don't open your mouth and say dumb things!

CNBC: We insult our own reporters so you don't have to.

(Photo of fighting -- and very showy -- lorikeets: Reuters)

With the end of the economic meltdown so tantalizingly close, and stock markets pricing in the spring thaw, The Consumerist’s annual Worst Company in America competition is just the tonic DealZone readers need to keep their prized sense of perspective appropriately tickled.

“It’s the bailouts versus the monopolies!” the Website’s news release rings out:

The annual 32-company battle royale has whittled itself down to the “final four”: Bank of America, Comcast, Ticketmaster and AIG. One of these disastrous companies will go on to join Halliburton (2006), RIAA (2007) and Countrywide (2008) as “The Worst Company in America.”

AIG and Ticketmaster face-off May 4th, Bank of America and Comcast face-off May 5th, the victors of those contests meet May 6th, and then the “winner” is announced May 7th.

The competition began with 32 companies separated into four brackets. Companies competed in head-to-head match ups and the winner of each match up was determined by the vote of Consumerist readers. The 32 companies included: AIG, Target, Peanut Corp of America, American Express, Walmart, HP, T-Mobile, Best Buy, Ticketmaster, TWC, Apple, United HealthCare, Verizon, Sprint, Home Depot, Citibank, Comcast, DirecTV, US Airways, Capital One, General Motors, United Airlines, Sears, Chase, eBay/Paypal, GE, Dell, Chrysler, AT&T, Circuit City, Starbucks, and Bank of America.

“AIG and Bank of America paved their way to the final four with exorbitant executive compensation packages, reckless management, and tax payer bailouts. Ticketmaster and Comcast drew the ire of voters because they were viewed as monopolies that consumers were forced to deal with,” said Meghann Marco, Consumerist.com.

Deals of the Day:

* French retail giant Carrefour has signed a preliminary memorandum of intent to buy 75 percent in Russia’s Seventh Continent and will make a final offer on May 15, a newspaper reported. Sources told Reuters last month that Carrefour had provisionally valued its takeover target at $1.25 billion.

* Commodity trader Noble Group raised its offer for Australian miner Gloucester Coal to A$490 million ($361 million), in a bid to scupper Gloucester’s planned deal with rival Whitehaven Coal.

* Sanofi-Aventis announced a 200 million euro ($265 million) plan to convert a factory to biotechnology, highlighting efforts by the world’s fourth largest drugmaker to penetrate the growing sector.

* Finland’s Metsaliitto said it will sell its 49.9-percent stake in state-controlled renewable energy firm Vapo to a consortium for 165 million euros ($218.4 million) to bolster its balance sheet.

* Azrieli Group said it submitted the winning bid to buy a 4.83 percent stake in Bank Leumi from Cerberus Capital Management and Gabriel Capital Corp.

* Zotye Auto, a Chinese maker of sport utility vehicles (SUV), is raising about 720 million yuan ($106 million) by selling a 20 to 30 percent stake to a private equity fund-led consortium, aiming for a Shanghai initial public offering later, sources said.

* Saab Automobile, the Swedish unit of struggling U.S. carmaker General Motors, said it was not in talks with Italian peer Fiat SpA about a takeover.

(PHOTO: Manchester United’s John O’Shea (R) celebrates his goal against Derby County during their English League Cup soccer match at Old Trafford in Manchester, northern England January 20, 2009. Photograph taken on January 20, 2009. REUTERS/Darren Staples)

Investment bank Jefferies recently released a report on technology M&A in the first quarter of 2009. As one can imagine, there are few surprises. We may as well give you the highlights here, which point to some signs of recovery compared to the end of last year, but clearly there's still a long way to go:

• The number of tech deals in North America fell 4 percent to 373 in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of 2008. It's the lowest level of activity in five years, but at least the drop is a manageable 4 percent -- in the December quarter, the number of deals dropped 23 percent from the third quarter of 2008.
• The aggregate value of North American M&A transactions was $4.3 billion in the first quarter, also a 4 percent drop from the prior quarter and an 85 percent plunge from the first quarter of 2008.
• Not a single tech IPO priced in the U.S. market during the quarter.
• The biggest tech deal announced in the quarter was Autonomy's purchase of Interwoven for $764 million.
• The first quarter of 2009 has only three transactions greater than $500 million, compared to 10 such deals in the year-ago quarter.

The Jefferies survey also looks at tech M&A in Western Europe, which presents a similarly gloomy picture. Nine of the top 10 Western European deals in the first quarter were cross-border, and four of them involved U.S. buyers. The aggregate deal value fell 80 percent to $1.8 billion compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.

But it's interesting to note that the mix of deals in the software, services and media sub-sector hasn't changed much quarter to quarter. For example, IT services deals have hovered at about 30 percent of total transactions for the past five quarters, while digital media M&A has ranged from 32 percent to 35 percent of total deals in the same period.

Based on the grim experience of the first quarter of this year, Jefferies predicts there will be fewer than 1,500 deals this year in North America, a decline of 22 percent from 2008, which saw 1,919 deals. In terms of aggregate value, the bank expects only $17.2 billion, a 79 percent drop from last year, and nowhere near 2007, when the total deals announced were collectively worth $191 billion.

(Chart: Jefferies)

Auto insurer Nationwide has joined businesses such as Kraft Foods, eBay and Amazon.com in developing applications that customers can access on Apple’s popular iPhone.

While Kraft’s iFood Assistant offers recipes and shopping lists for consumers, Nationwide’s application gives policyholders instant tools to help deal with some of the calls and paperwork that follow a vehicle bust-up, including access to tow truck service, and getting a claim started.

Nationwide says it is the first insurer to launch such an application, or “app” as iPhone tools are more often referred to.

Policyholders that download the free iPhone application may appreciate the Nationwide tool even if calamity never strikes, since it also features a virtual flashlight that turns your screen to maximum brightness when you need more light.