DealZone

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.

And in a market where deals aren’t getting done — mainly due to tight credit conditions and partly due to value gaps between buyers and sellers (due to the huge declines in stocks late last year) — you’ve gotta ask: what’s the magic pill?

Deals of the day:

* Indian mid-sized IT outsourcer Tech Mahindra won a bidding auction for a majority stake in fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services Ltd, edging out Larsen & Toubro, seen by some analysts as the favourite bidder. 
    
* India’s Larsen & Toubro, which has built up a 12 percent stake in Satyam Computer Services, plans to hold on to the stake, its chief financial officer said on television channel NDTV Profit. 
    
* Pakistan’s Habib Bank Ltd. (HBL) and MCB Bank are interested in buying the operations of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in the South Asian nation, the two banks said in separate statements on Monday. 
    
* A bid by Japan’s Mitsubishi Rayon Co for unlisted British chemicals maker Lucite International has hit a hurdle in China where regulators have delayed the acquisition, two sources briefed on the matter said. 

Sovereign wealth funds were thought to be nearly extinct sources of capital for the crumbling western banks. But life finds a way. The Government of Singapore Investment Corp, one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds, said it would subscribe to UBS‘s rights issue. A GIC spokeswoman declined to provide the value for the transaction but said it currently owns 0.4 percent in UBS common stock. It controls 9.54 percent of the voting rights in UBS. The fund invested 11 billion Swiss francs ($11 billion) in mandatory convertible notes in UBS last December, after the bank’s U.S. housing crisis losses. In January, GIC invested $6.88 billion in Citigroup. Its sister fund Temasek Holdings pumped $5 billion into Merrill Lynch. GIC says on its website that it manages well above $100 billion but some analysts estimate the figure is closer to $300 billion.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board approved Bank of America Corp‘s acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp, the nation’s largest mortgage lender. Bank of America agreed in January to pay $4 billion for Countrywide, a California-based firm that helped fuel a multi-year housing boom that went bust when risky loans to shaky borrowers began to fail. In a statement, the federal regulator said it considered many comments for and against the bank buyout and “has considered carefully the financial factors of the proposal.” The Fed also said that it vetted about 770 individual comments on the proposed takeover and the views of many other stakeholders.

Applied Materials has approached beleaguered Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASM International to buy a significant part of its business for $400 million to $500 million. Shares in ASMI jumped as much as 23 percent to an eight-month high after the company said its U.S. rival had expressed interest in two of its businesses that make machines to deposit thin films of materials on silicon wafers. ASMI, which is locked in a dispute with activist investors who are trying to sack its chief executive, said a divestment would have major implications for its strategy.