DealZone

Nokia’s plunging share price and persistent speculation it might be a takeover target is far from attracting real suitors interested in saving the struggling mobile phone company, write Victoria Howley and Tarmo Virki.

General Motors is considering putting Opel up for sale again as management is losing confidence that the European arm will return to profitability, two German magazines reported.  Here’s a timeline of the twists and turns in Opel’s ownership.

Former BP  boss Tony Hayward and financier Nathaniel Rothschild aim to raise around $1.6 billion with a June listing of an acquisition vehicle that will target oil assets.

Samsonite, the world’s biggest luggage maker, narrowed the indicative price range of its Hong Kong initial public offer, the latest sign of weak investor appetite for richly-priced deals.

“While a handful of initial public offerings are hitting the market with a pop, many are landing with a thud,” reports the NYT’s DealBook.

General Electric and Capital One have submitted bids for ING’s U.S. online banking operations in a deal worth about $9 billion, Bloomberg reports.

The frothy market for Internet IPOs is raising the specter of a bubble, underscoring how little has changed despite lawsuits and investigations in the wake of the 1990s dot-com craze.

Maple Group Acquisition Corp, which has gone hostile with its $3.7 billion offer for Toronto Stock Exchange operator TMX Group , is in talks to add at least three other financial-services companies to its consortium, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources.

LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, boosted the pricing of its initial public offering by 30 percent valuing the 9-year old company at a little over $4 billion, or about 17 times their 2010 revenue.

LinkedIn’s IPO, which is scheduled for Thursday, comes on the heels of what appears to be an unsuccessful offering Renren.

Earlier this month Renren, one of the biggest social networking sites in China, stock surged 29 percent in their debut but it has since dropped to below its IPO price.

Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) dropped their $11.1 billion bid for rival exchange NYSE Euronext after it became clear the deal would not gain approval from U.S. antitrust regulators. The companies first offered to buy the New York Stock Exchange parent on April 1, aiming to curb a proposed friendly merger with Deutsche Boerse that was worth $10.2 billion when first announced in February. Deutsche Boerse responded to the news of the dropped bid by saying it plans to continue to pursue a merger with the Big Board parent.

In other exchange merger news, a consortium of Canadian banks and pension funds launched a $3.7 billion bid for TMX Group in the hopes of keeping Canada’s largest stock exchange from falling under foreign ownership. The bid tops a $3 billion offer for the exchange operator from the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The LSE said it remains committed to its own merger proposal with the TMX despite the higher rival offer, but should its bid fail it could find itself to be a takeover target, analysts said.

U.S. chemicals group DuPont won its takeover battle for Danish food ingredients company Danisco. The $6.4 billion acquisition is a part of DuPont’s push into the food technology business that CEO Ellen Kullman says will “create an industry leader in industrial biosciences and nutrition and health.”

Groupon is likely to pick Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead a second-half initial public offering that could value the fast-growing daily deals site at $15 billion to $20 billion, according to a source.

Commodity trader Glencore’s planned $12 billion London listing has long been seen as the first step to merging with Xstrata, in what could be the biggest mining takeover in history. The question for most analysts and investors since the IPO was confirmed is not if the deal happens but when — and how.

BP’s partners in its Russian venture TNK-BP rejected the UK oil major’s offer to settle a dispute caused by its $18 billion tie-up with Rosneft, casting further doubt on the deal.

Glencore is looking to raise up to $12.1 billion for its initial public offering in a duel listing that will boost firepower for deals at the height of the resource boom. The long-awaited details of the offer, set to be the largest ever in London, were outlined in an intention-to-float that confirmed an earlier Reuters story. However, the company did not name a new non-executive chairman, a requirement for its listing.

NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse are looking at several options to win support for their $10.2 billion deal, including paying special dividends to shareholders, according to sources briefed on the matter. The idea of paying the special dividends is to win shareholders support over an unsolicited higher offer from Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange Inc (ICE). While NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse currently pay dividends, Nasdaq and ICE do not.

BP and Rosneft agreed to extend the deadline for their swap agreement by one month as the British oil producer tries to salvage the $7.8 billion deal. BP’s tie-up with Rosneft is already blocked by a court injunction secured by the company’s Russian partners in its TNK-BP venture.

Schneider Electric issued a statement denying it had planned to buy U.S. conglomerate Tyco International, but this did little to kill the buyout talks as a source with knowledge of the matter said the French engineering group held earlier talks with Tyco.  Shares of Schneider initially rose more than 2 percent after the denial but dropped after analysts made comments speculating a tie-up may be coming soon, and is expected to weigh on shares in the long term.

BP’s tie-up with Rosneft was at risk of collapse on Wednesday as the state-controlled Russian oil major said it would not extend a Thursday deadline on a $16 billion share swap. The possible failure of the deal would hurt CEO Bob Dudley, who on Thursday faces shareholders angered by the Gulf of Mexico disaster as BP holds its annual general meeting.

MGM has disclosed the planned structure of its initial public offering in the Macau casino market, reaching an agreement with co-owner Pansy Ho. In the agreement, Ho would receive a 29 percent stake in the company, MGM China Holdings Ltd. An IPO would make MGM Macau the last of Macau’s six gambling licensees to go public.

The planned $18 billion deal between BP and Rosneft was left even more uncertain after its chief backer Igor Sechin stepped down as Rosneft’s chairman. Sechin, who is also Russia’s deputy prime minster quit after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the removal of ministers from the board of state companies. BP’s tie-up with Rosneft is already blocked by a court injunction secured by the company’s Russian partners in its TNK-BP venture.

HP held talks with software company Tibco about a possible acquisition until about two weeks ago, according to sources familiar with the matter. The talks come as new CEO Leo Apotheker is expected to revitalize the company’s software division via acquisitions, which only accounts for 3 percent of its revenue. It is not clear if the talks will resume. (more…)

Sinovel, China’s top wind turbine producer, plans to raise up to $1.4 billion in one of the most expensive main board IPOs in Shanghai. The listing may well be a test for China’s IPO market, which had a mixed performance late last year.

Shares in BP hit a six-month high after reports rival Royal Dutch Shell considered a takeover bid, and that economic damages from its oil spill will be lower than forecast.

Brazil’s Petrobras offered to buy Eni’s 33.3 percent stake in Portuguese oil company Galp for 4.7 billion, business daily Diario Economico reported without citing sources.

BP is looking to sell assets to help pay for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A source says BP is in talks with U.S. oil and gas company Apache Corp. The Sunday Times reported that the talks involved $12 billion in assets. View article

Aon, the world’s largest insurance brokerage, said it will acquire human-resource service company Hewitt Associates for about $4.9 billion in cash and stock to beef up its consulting business. The Aon-Hewitt deal is the second major deal in the consultancy space in a year. View article

If you are feeling bullish, then you’re in agreement Warren Buffett, Ken Fisher, Leon Cooperman and John Paulson. The WSJ takes a look at what these four market heavyweights are buying. View WSJ article