DealZone

Group buying sites Groupon and LivingSocial are both in the process of launching multi-billion dollar IPOs, but as Deal Journal reports, the companies are also “plowing full steam ahead with deal making.”

Shares of Dunkin’ Brands shot up as much as 56 percent on its first day of trading, closing at $27.85 by the end of Wednesday’s trading session. The parent of the Dunkin’ Donuts chain said it has set a 20-year target to open 15,000 new stores in the U.S., up from its current 6,800. This would surpass rival Starbucks’ numbers.

France Telecom is looking to put its Swiss, Austrian and Portugese units up for sale. Analysts say the sell-off could raise as much as $2.9 billion and pave the way for a return to shareholders.

Private equity and real estate firm Blackstone Group is in talks to buy healthcare IT company Emdeon, in a deal that could be valued at $3 billion, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Sprint Nextel‘s stock soared 11 percent before the market opened on a British newspaper report that T Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom had appointed Deutsche Bank to advise on a possible run at Sprint, valuing the U.S. cellular carrier at $11 billion.

Sprint certainly is a logical target for any company looking to boost its position in the very busy U.S. mobile market. It announced a large goodwill write-off in February 2008

And Deutsche Telekom is on the make. It signed a deal with France Telecom to combine the companies’ British mobile phone businesses — T-Mobile UK and Orange — last week.

Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom have confirmed they are talking to combine their UK mobile operations in a JV. And Abu Dhabi’s ATIC has offered to buy Chartered Semiconductor — another sign that M&A is picking up after Kraft/Cadbury?

For all Reuters deals news, click here.

Just one story we picked up from other media today: Chinese machinery maker Tengzhong is still working to close a deal with General Motors Co to buy the U.S. automaker’s Hummer brand after a regulatory setback, Chinese media reported.

As dealmakers everywhere struggle to get deals done, the healthcare industry seals yet another one.

Express Scripts has agreed to buy health insurer WellPoint’s prescription business for $4.68 billion in a significant expansion for the U.S. pharmacy beenfit manager. The deal will be a concoction of cash and up to $1.4 billion in common stock, and will generate more than $1 billion of incremental EBITDA.

This comes on the heels of Pfizer’s $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth, Merck’s $41.1 billion takeover of Schering Plough and Roche Holding’s $46.8 billion buyout of Genentech. Granted, this isn’t a pharma deal, but it still falls under the umbrella of the healthcare sector.

The Wall Street Journal leads with a piece saying Microsoft is preparing a new bid for Yahoo‘s search business that could bring on board media giants Time Warner and News Corp and effectively lead to Yahoo’s breakup. The talks are preliminary and unlikely to result in a deal with Yahoo, the paper said, and although it all seems whimsical, Yahoo shares jumped more than 6 percent in early trade. Yahoo rejected a $47.5 billion takeover offer by Microsoft, and earlier this week questioned whether the software maker was ever serious about a full-scale merger. Carl Icahn, who is running a slate of directors to replace Yahoo’s board and has called for the removal of Chief Executive Jerry Yang, has met with Microsoft, which is encouraging him to press his proxy contest as a way to keep pressure on Yahoo to enter into a deal that would lift its share price, the paper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

British events organizer and publisher Informa said it was considering a 2.15 billion pound ($4.3 billion) bid approach from a consortium of private equity firms, sending its shares 10 percent higher. Informa said in a statement that Providence Equity, The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman had made a bid proposal of 506 pence a share on June 26. “Discussions continue to be at an early stage and there can be no certainty that an offer will be made,” it said. When news emerged last month that the equity firms were working on a bid for the media company, the shares showed only modest gains as analysts questioned whether a deal would succeed in the current tight credit markets.

The markets took down another deal yesterday. Blaming grim market conditions Blockbuster abandoned its $1.3 billion offer to buy electronics retailer Circuit City. Shares of the video rental chain jumped more than 7 percent in extended trade after the news while Circuit City’s shares fell 1.6 percent, after declining nearly 12 percent at Tuesday’s close — hitting their lowest point in two decades. Speculation that a potential deal with Blockbuster would not happen gained ground after Circuit City posted a wider quarterly loss and cut its dividend in June.

You can’t tell the telecom mergers without a scorecard: France Telecom proposed a $41 billion bid for TeliaSonera to create the world’s third-largest broadband operator and fourth-biggest mobile company, but the Nordic company rejected the offer. Britain’s Vodafone said its U.S.-based Verizon Wireless venture with Verizon is in advanced talks to buy U.S. rural mobile service provider Alltel, potentially making it the top U.S. wireless carrier ahead of AT&T. Deutsche Telekom clinched a deal last month with the Greek government that gives it a 25 percent stake in operator OTE, and India’s Reliance Communications and South Africa’s MTN are also close to a tie-up. What is the deal? “In the current context of consolidation, it appears unavoidable to have critical mass,” said France Telecom Chief Executive Didier Lombard.

Verizon’s move in particular was a surprise as it came only seven months after Alltel was loaded up with debt in a private-equity takeover by TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs’ GS Capital Partners. The deal would value Alltel at eight times its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, compared with its November sale to private equity firms for about nine times EBITDA, the source said. While TPG and Goldman don’t appear to have made much money, it doesn’t seem they’ve lost much either. It’s hard to imagine they planned to flip it after 6 months, but perhaps for private equity these days, getting out free is good enough.

BHP Billiton, the world’s top miner, said it sees no need to sell assets to win regulatory approval for its $170 billion proposed takeover of rival Rio Tinto, but did not rule out that it might have to. Chief Executive Marius Kloppers also said his company had not held talks with any Chinese entity about buying a stake in BHP. If it had, he added, it would have had to disclose the discussions to the market. BHP will send its takeover offer to Rio shareholders only after it has been cleared by anti-trust regulators in Europe, Australia, the United States, Canada and South Africa, expected later this year. It filed its application to the European Commission, which it considers one of the three key regulators on the bid, on May 30. The EC will say by July 4 whether it will approve the deal, open an in-depth investigation, or permit a short extension.