DealZone

Pfizer has agreed to buy King Pharmaceuticals for $3.6 billion. *View article *View WSJ blog on who’s benefiting from the deal *View Forbes blog on why the deal seems bad for Genzyme

L’Oreal may be bidding for Avon, the Daily Mail reported. Avon shares jumped 6 percent on the news. *View article

The Australia dollar’s surge to 28-year highs could cause  a headache for Foster’s wine business bidders. *View article

Google is investing in a proposed underwater electric cable to join future offshore wind projects to the East Coast power grid. It’s an investment in “a superhighway for clean energy,” according to Google. *View article

A consortium of Chinese companies may make a rival bid for Potash. Andrew Ross Sorkin reports the politically charged subtext is: “Do we really want the Chinese to control the company that has the largest capacity to produce fertilizer?” *View article

CNOOC agreed to pay $1.1 billion for a stake in a U.S. shale oil and gas field, testing the U.S. political climate with a deal for assets once deemed off limits to the Chinese due to protectionist sentiment. *View article *View factbox on China M&A activity

Rival bids for Potash look unwieldy, analysts say, which leaves Potash alone to defend itself from BHP’s $39 billion offer. *View article *View timeline

The private equity industry is bouncing back and has a strong presence in UK mergers and acquisitions, according to the FT. *View article

“It is a game of nerves at this point,” said a banker familiar with the Sanofi-Aventis bid for Genzyme. The transatlantic takeover fight descended into an ill-tempered stand-off on Friday over the price of the deal. *View article *View WSJ article *View article on why banks are scrambling to fund Sanofi’s bid

Transatlantic deals this year have been about buying existing products and established brands in the mature markets of the U.S. and Britain. *View article

European banks and insurers will be forced to consolidate in response to new regulations, a top Credit Suisse investment banker told Reuters. *View article

French drinks group Castel denied SABMiller was in talks to buy its African beer business, although analysts say a deal would make strategic sense. *View article

The WSJ looks at where the Hertz-Avis-Dollar Thrifty saga can go from here. *View article

“GE, under chief executive Jeff Immelt, has overspent on takeovers in the past, and it’s hard to get a handle on whether or not it is bringing newfound discipline to its mergers and acquisitions machine,” writes columnist Rob Cox. *View column

Banks are self-regulating in advance of new financial reforms. Are recent moves by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan “smoke and mirrors” or a way to subtly shift the form of impending regulation? *View analysis *View Q&A on Wall Street reform*Full coverage of regulatory news

“Unlocking the potential of Genzyme’s experimental multiple sclerosis drug Campath could be key to prying a higher price for the U.S. biotech from Sanofi-Aventis,” writes Lewis Krauskopf and Ben Hirschler. *View analysis *View WSJ blog

General Electric is building up its industrial business with a $3 billion bid for Dresser Inc. The deal announcement came the same day as oilfield services company Wellstream rejected GE’s takeover approach. *View article

Reuters blogger Felix Salmon looks at how the media covered a report of the effects of a takeover of Potash Corp. Felix finds the coverage often differed from the actual report. *View blog *View Reuters article

“The biggest merger in Australian business history is dead. The board of Rio Tinto is preparing to abandon a $120 billion iron ore deal with the rival mining giant BHP Billiton in the Pilbara,” reports The Sydney Morning Herald *View article

Doing the math on the AIG bailout and repayment isn’t all that hard, reports Andrew Ross Sorkin from the NYT. *View article

Sanofi is getting hostile in its bid for Genzyme, after Genzyme management refused to negotiate. The $69-per-share offer will be taken directly to shareholders but will they be looking for more? *View article *View graphic on hostile deals  *View WSJ article on pharma M&A

Growth in emerging markets is aiding a global M&A boom and with large cash piles in hand, companies are finding it hard to resist the urge to acquire. *View article

Coca-Cola has completed its deal to take over North American operation of its top bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises. Reuters interviewed Coke Chief Executive Muhtar Kent about what the deal will mean for the remaining independent bottlers. *View article

Business Insider makes the case for Yahoo and AOL merging, immediately. *View Business Insider article

AIGs exit plan with the government is good for the company but  taxpayers may not be getting an equally good deal, writes columnist Richard Beales. *View column *View graphic *View WSJ report on how the exit plan was formed

Chinese refiner Sinopec will buy 40 percent of Repsol’s Brazilian arm for $7.1 billion. *View article *View factbox on China’s M&A activity

“Tucked away in a basement in London’s exclusive Mayfair district is a hedge fund manager investing entirely in raw materials, one of a small band trading commodity spreads and making big money in the process,” writes Christopher Johnson and Joe Brock. *View analysis

Facebook is likely to go public sometime after late 2012, a board member said. A stock market debut by a company valued in the tens of billions of dollars would be one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings of the decade. *View article

Andrew Ross Sorkin from The New York Times takes a look at the secondary market’s implied market value for Facebook. Will Facebook ultimately be worth $33 billion or $3 billion? *View NYT article

Southwest Airlines’ $1.4 billion AirTran Holdings deal pays for itself, writes columnist Robert Cyran. *View article *Further reading

American International Group and the U.S. government are moving closer to a deal on how the Treasury Department would exit its investment in the bailed-out insurer, sources said. *View article *View Bloomberg article

Southwest Airlines will purchase AirTran Holdings for $1.04 billion in cash and stock in a deal that will allow Southwest to expand its presence in major East Coast markets. The move by Southwest puts pressure on all major rivals, who are trying to strengthen their eastern markets to leverage more premium-paying business travel. *View article

Consumer goods group Unilever will buy hair and skin care company Alberto Culver for $3.7 billion in the latest move to rebalance its portfolio toward higher growth lines. Analysts said the price of the deal looked high, but could be justified by cost savings and by skewing Unilever’s business to more high growth, high margin categories. *View article