Auto maker General Motors is grappling with the future of its European units Saab and Opel after one sale collapsed and the other was pulled, targeting the bulk of its 9,000 job cuts at Opel’s German factories.

Bookseller Borders UK called in the administrators yesterday, adding its name to a growing list of failed British high street retailers. Administrator MCR is hoping to sell the business, bought by Valco (the private equity arm of turnaround specialist Hilco) in July this year, as a going concern.

Lachlan Murdoch, son of News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch, sold some $27.6 million of his shares in his father’s company as he bought 50 percent of Daily Mail & General Trust’s radio operations in Australia.

For the latest deals news from Reuters, click here.

And here’s the top stories from elsewhere (some external links may require subscription):

Concerns over Dubai World’s debt dominated the news as stocks around the world tumbled and markets struggled to get to grips with the extent of the problem in the absence of solid information, says the Financial Times.

Siemens AG’s hearing aids business, valued at up to 3 billion euros, is drawing interest from private equity firms including KKR and BC Partners, Bloomberg writes.

Ranked by Forbes as India’s richest man with a net worth of $32 billion, Mukesh Ambani is no stranger to taking risks.

The move by conglomerate Reliance Industries, controlled by Ambani, to bid for bankrupt LyondellBasell is a calculated one. Markets seem to think this is a bargain and investors pushed up Reliance’s stock nearly 4 percent on Monday.

If the deal, which sources say may be worth $12 billion,  goes through, it would catapult Reliance into the ranks of top petrochemical makers such as Saudi Arabia’s SABIC, Germany’s BASF and Dow Chemical Co.

The bid comes at a time when asset prices have fallen globally in the wake of the economic crisis but there are still some lingering doubts over whether the worst is over for the global economy.

Reliance hasn’t shied away from making mega investments during downturns.

Last December, Reliance commissioned a 580,000 barrels per day refinery next to its existing 660,00 bpd plant  in the western Indian state of Gujarat, creating the world’s biggest oil refining complex just as global oil demand began to collapse.

Reliance has a cash pile of $4 billion and $8 billion in treasury stock that can be sold, so funding is unlikely to be an issue for the company, Macquarie said in a research note ahead of the bid. Bank of America Merrill Lynch is among the advisers for Reliance, sources said.

In its bid for Luxembourg-based LyondellBasell, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January, after being unable to make its debt obligations, Reliance, India’s largest listed firm, with a market value of about $75 billion, might be taking advantage of the lack of any competing bids.

LyondellBasell had sales of close to $51 billion in the 2008/09 financial year, while Reliance, which has interests in petrochemicals, refining, oil and gas exploration, and retail, logged revenue of about $32 billion.

 ”Cocos” has become the user-friendly name for a new type of hybrid bond created to help UK bank Lloyds raise money from investors to break away from a government insurance scheme for bad loans.

This nickname seems to have caught on in financial circles as it is much snappier than the bonds’ official title: Enhanced Capital Notes.

The name Cocos seems to have derived from “contingent convertible,” which describes one characteristic of these bonds - they convert to equity in certain circumstances.

Coco was famously the first name of French fashion designer Chanel. She was not known for her understanding of the credit markets but she did know a thing or two about fashion and the value of tradition over new-fangledness.

One senior capital markets banker pointed out these comments she made:

“Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.”

Some bankers hope Cocos can become credit market classics, but admit that the jury is still out.

For Yell, the publisher of Britain’s Yellow Pages directories, there is a world of difference between 90 and 95 percent.

The lower figure is the amount of lenders backing its debt financing plan, the higher figure is the amount it needs. If it falls short of its target this evening, the company may need to go to the court to push through a deal.

(News story here.)

The proposals are vital to the heavily indebted company’s short-term future, allowing it to rejig its capital structure and tap equity investors for up to 500 million pounds.

However, the size of the company’s lender group - 300 banks and funds - is working against it. Trying to get all the lenders signed up to the debt deal has been as difficult as herding cats, bankers say.

Going to the courts for approval can be lengthy and expensive, lawyers say. For Yell, a court case may mean they will miss tapping the equity markets before the end of the year. This will disappoint, as the equity markets have backed a range of weak companies in recent weeks, such as HeidelbergCement and Ladbrokes.

Yell may need to hope their generous spirit continues into the new year.

American actor Bruce Willis is probably best known as the all-action hero in the Die Hard films, fighting evil-doers against all the odds.

But in France, Willis looks to be a new shareholder in French vodka maker Belvedere, maker of Poland’s Sobieski vodka. Earlier this year Willis signed a multi-year deal to promote Sobieski.

Like Willis, Belvedere is no stranger to battles, having been through a two-year-long court fight with its bondholders. The bondholders — many of whom are hedge funds — want to be repaid and would accept a forced sale of the company to get their cash back. Belvedere disagrees and has proposed a debt restructuring plan that would see them paid back over years.

Mediating between the battling groups are the French commercial courts, who must interpret recently introduced ’sauvegarde’ rules.

Lawyers say the economic crisis means courts are sympathetic to the French companies and often refuse to support lenders seeking to take control of struggling businesses’ assets. Read here for more details.

A court ruling on Nov. 10 will see whether Belvedere bondholders will be forced to accept delays in being repaid. Bondholders say the company’s plans are “unreal” while Belvedere thinks the lenders are only interested in breaking up the company for their own gain.

Many financiers will watch closely to see which way the court rules. But given the direction of recent court cases, few expect Belvedere to need Bruce Willis to force their point.

Two very different deals announced Wednesday show that financing markets are starting to support larger private equity transactions again.

Still, large numbers of banks were involved in each deal and both involved a significant amount of the private equity firms’ own equity.

“It suggests there’s a little bit of thawing,” said Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago. “It suggests there will be a normal world at some point and they are both the kind of deals you’d expect to see in this environment — you don’t expect public-to-publics in this market.”

Blackstone’s acquisition of AB InBev’s theme parks involves up to $1 billion of equity in the deal, which is around 40 percent of the overall price. The rest is coming from senior secured debt, mezzanine financing and an undrawn revolver. Senior credit facilities are being provided by a line of banks — BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank Securities, Goldman Sachs Loan Partners and Mizuho Corporate Bank.

Clayton Dubilier & Rice Inc’s $477 million deal to take a stake in cleaning company JohnsonDiversey and undertake a $2.6 billion recapitalization was backed by an even longer list of banks: eleven in total are willing to participate in the financing, CD&R said.

The large number of banks involved “indicates that the lending market is still not robust so you need a bunch of lenders to get one of this size,” said Kaplan. Lenders will prefer to be diversified, he added.

Equity levels in deals are also higher than during the boom years. The equity check put in by Blackstone for the theme park deal is higher than what firms might have put in during 2005-07. During those frothy years, a more usual number was around 30 percent, whereas this year, some deals by private equity firms have even involved 100 percent equity.

“Equity percentages when the debt market is strong tend to be in the 30 percent range — or 25 percent if it is really high — and when the bank markets are off, which they are now… you’re at 35 or 40 percent, which is where you are today,” said Kaplan.

Still, there’s a long way to go between here and the late 1980s buyout wave.

“The big difference between the late ’80s and the recent wave is that (then), the median deal was 90 percent debt and 10 percent equity — it was insane,” said Kaplan. “The deals done in this last wave were much safer.”

From this week’s Thomson Reuters Investment Banking Scorecard:

· US CORPORATE DEBT TOPS $20 BILLION, BREAKS RECORD

For the second consecutive week, the volume of corporate investment grade debt in the US market topped the $20 billion mark, bolstered by benchmark names in the energy & power and financial sectors.   Shell International Finance raised $5 billion via Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, while Canada’s Cenovus Energy raised $3.5 billion this week.

Investment grade debt activity from non-financial issuers totals $372.3 billion for year-to-date 2009, already besting the previous all-time record for annual non-financial activity set in 2001 when $360.5 billion in new corporate issues were brought to market.

· EUROPEAN CONVERTIBLE BONDS UP 50%
While global convertible bond activity is down 46% over 2008, the market for convertible bonds in Europe has picked up dramatically, with $24.1 billion in new convertible offerings - a 50% year-over-year increase.  Issuers in the materials, financial and industrial sectors account for nearly 60% of this year’s volume in Europe.  Deals from Anglo American, Arcelor Mittal and Alcatel Lucent top the list of convertible offerings this year.

Morgan Stanley leads the year-to-date European convertible bond league table with $4.6 billion or 19.2% of overall activity from 17 new issues this year.  BNP Paribas and Calyon round out the top three underwriters.

· CHINESE IPOs UP 7% OVER 2008

With two multi-billion dollar initial public offerings this week, Chinese IPO activity totals $17.9 billion for year-to-date 2009, a 7% increase over last year at this time and one of the few markets to see gains over 2008.  China Metallurgical Construction Corp raised $2.4 billion in the second largest Chinese IPO this year, while China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) raised $1.1 billion on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

IPO activity in the industrials sector comprises 57% of year-to-date volume in China this year, followed by materials with 15% and healthcare with 10%.

That will ultimately be the question asked about what kind of a future the German carmaker Opel faces.

Parent General Motors said on Thursday that it indeed wanted
to sell a majority stake in the unit to Canadian auto parts
group Magna and Russia’s Sberbank, a decision long favoured by the German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel.

With about two weeks to go until a general election in
Europe’s biggest economy, this would clearly be a political
victory — but the question remains whether it will also be an
economic one.

Merkel said that GM’s recommendation — which would see
Magna’s Brussels-listed rival bidder RHJ International losing
out in the battle that has dragged on for months — is going to
be tied to conditions.

Although she said that those conditions would be manageable and
negotiable, doubts remain about whether this will be the new
beginning the company is hoping for.

“The most meaningful choice would have been a global company
that produces several millions of cars (per year), such as GM or
a Chinese producer. Magna is not a producer of cars in the
classic sense, and I could imagine that some other producers
could be upset about the decision. As a consequence, Opel may
lose some contracts,” said NordLB analyst Frank Schwope.

“This seems to be a political decision rather than an
economical one.”

What do you think?

Highlights from this week’s Thomson Reuters Investment Banking Scorecard:

·Nine Consecutive Weeks of IPO Filings in the US
Since late June, 32 Companies have filed to go public on US stock exchanges, marking nine consecutive weeks of IPO filings and the longest streak in over a year.  Notable names include Hyatt Hotels, Dole Foods, Dollar General and Ancestry.com.

·US Debt Capital Markets Activity Breaks Even
The volume of new debt offerings from US issuers totals $1.5 trillion for year-to-date 2009, exactly even with volume last year at this time.  US High Yield activity is up 139% over 2008 levels, totaling $72.4 billion from 166 offerings.

·Porsche-Volkswagen Tie-up Boosts M&A Rankings
As Porsche and Volkswagen prepare to merge operations, eight investment banks secured advisory roles in the transaction, boosting worldwide M&A rankings.  Most notably, Citi moved up one spot to third, while UBS moved to seventh from ninth.

·Switzerland Sells 9% Stake in UBS
The Swiss government sold a 9% stake in UBS on Thursday, raising $5.1 billion in proceeds and topping the week’s list of biggest equity offerings.  European follow-on common stock activity totals $125.1 billion, a 15% increase over last year at this time.

·Investor Group Raises Stake in Cathay Pacific Airlines
An investor group comprised of Air China and Swire Pacific acquired an additional 14.5% stake in Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airlines in a deal valued at $948.2 million.  Year-to-date, Hong Kong target M&A totals $14.1 billion, a 76% decrease from 2008.

·Japanese Lending Down 1% from 2008
Taisei Corp, a Tokyo-based construction and engineering concern, secured a $1.6 billion revolving credit facility via Mizuho and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, bringing Japanese syndicated lending activity to $168.9 billion, a 1% decline from last year.

Nycomed, the Swiss drug company, already has 4 billion euros or so of net debt and some pretty junky single-B credit ratings. But that’s not deterring the private-equity owned outfit from plotting a bid for the drugs business of Belgium’s Solvay, even in these leverage-phobic times. As I wrote earlier:

“Switzerland’s Nycomed plans to draw on buoyant junk bond markets and new cash from its private-equity owners to fund a buyout of Solvay’s drugs unit, people familiar with the matter said.

“Such a structure would allow Nycomed — which already has billions of euros of syndicated loans — to bypass the moribund leveraged loan market and would create a group with some 6 billion euros ($8.6 billion) in yearly sales.”

Nycomed has a few strong cards to play — a track record for integrating acquisitions and quickly paying down debt, owners ready to stump up a billion euros or so of fresh funds, and a solid case for being able to tap both Europe’s recently resurrected junk-bond market and its much larger U.S. counterpart.

And in preferring securities to bank debt, Nycomed is blazing a high-yield trail down a path already well-trodden by investment-grade peers such as Roche, whose buyout of Genentech was underpinned by $30 billion of bonds. Indeed some, including Reuters columnist Alex Smith, sense a “dramatic shift” underway in Europe as bonds fill a vacuum left by vanishing bank loans.