DealZone

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…)

New capital rules set by global regulators brought relief to the world’s banks on Monday, giving weaker lenders time to raise funds and freeing the strong to lift dividends or hit the acquisition trail. *View article *View Basel III factbox *View analysis on the impact

Marking HP’s second major deal since the departure of Mark Hurd as chief executive, the company said it will buy security software firm ArcSight Inc for $1.5 billion in cash. *View article *View reaction from Seeking Alpha

Frozen out of deals for two years by a lack of credit and a stormy economic outlook, buyout firms are now back fighting over assets, keen to spend hundreds of billions of dollars before time runs out and they have to give money back to investors. *View article

Burger King agreed to be bought by investment firm 3G Capital for $3.26 billion. The deal represents a 46 percent premium to Burger King’s share price before news of the deal talks emerged on Wednesday. *View article *View WSJ article on how tasty a Burger King deal is

Hewlett-Packard raised its offer by $3 to $33 per share for 3Par. Shortly after, Dell announced it is bowing out of the bidding war for the data storage company. *View article

China is stepping up attempts to hamper BHP Billiton’s $39 billion hostile offer for Potash Corp, amid worries about future supplies of fertilizer it needs to rapidly boost food production. There is a report that China’s state-run Sinochem has hired HSBC to advise it on options and another which says China is considering launching an anti-monopoly investigation into the deal. *View article *View factbox on Potash supply and demand

Dell is expected to soon give up its pursuit of 3PAR, either ceding to HP’s last offer of $30 per share or giving up at a few dollars higher, according to a Reuters survey of eight technology investors and analysts. * View article *Columnist Robert Cyran asks: Is 3PAR an overpriced bauble for HP?  * An MSN article makes the case that both Dell and HP are certifiable.

AIG faces the prospect of looking for another buyer for its Taiwan unit after regulators threw out its proposed $2.2 billion sale of Nan Shan Life to China Strategic.  There have been suspicions in Taiwan about the connections of China Strategic with political foe China, and concern it did not have the experience to run an insurance business.  * View article

Some high-profile IPO’s are under water and this is not sitting well. “Investors are sick to the back teeth of being treated like idiots,” Dan Nickols, at Old Mutual Asset Managers, tells the Financial Times. *View FT article

What’s another $200 million between rival bidders? Less than three hours after Dell matched HP’s $1.8 billion bid for data storage specialist 3PAR, HP upped the ante to an even $2 billion. The HP offer shakes out to $30 per share. 3PAR shares were up another 20 percent to $31.29 in early trading, according to Reuters. *View article*

FT blogger Gwen Robinson wondered how 3PAR became the target of such an intense bidding war and suggested it may be “simply a throwback to those crazed acquisitive days of the dotcom boom.” *View article*

In another software play, HP is rumored to be a potential bidder for security software maker ArcSight Inc. According to the Wall Street Journal, bidders, including Oracle and HP, could pay up to $1.5 billion for the company. Other ArcSight competitors could include EMC, IBM and CA Inc. *View article*

Trumping HP’s bid by 30 cents a share, Dell offered, and 3PAR accepted, $1.6 billion for the data storage company. *View article *View analysis on valuations taking a back seat to egos

Fast money is building in Potash Corp after BHP Billiton’s hostile bid, but the sheer size of the potential deal could limit the sway arbitrageurs and hedge funds have on the outcome, writes Michael Erman. *View article *Full coverage *View WSJ’s blog on how to say “Potash”

Take a look at what could be Phil Falcone’s riskiest trade ever in a special report on the hedge fund manager’s wireless broadband technology bet. *View article

Hewlett-Packard launched a $1.6 billion bid for data storage company 3PAR, topping an offer by technology rival Dell by about 33 percent. The competing bids for 3PAR come as technology heavyweights have been boosting investment in cloud computing and virtualization technology. *View article

Potash Corp has held discussions with China’s Sinochem Group, said a source close to the matter, as the fertilizer producer looks for options to BHP Billiton’s $38.6 billion hostile bid. Media reports have also mentioned Brazil’s Vale and Chinese private equity fund Hopu Investment Management.  *View article
*View graphic on potash and BHP Billiton and Potash Corp.

SABMiller and Asahi Breweries are looking at Foster’s Group’s beer operations, valued at more than $10 billion, but have not yet made any formal offers, sources said. Foster’s said in May it would split the beer unit from its ailing wine business. Analysts expect suitors will only emerge after Foster’s splits its business in early 2011 when complex debt and structural issues are resolved. *View article

HP’s deal to buy Palm underlines the keenness of PC vendors to jump into the booming smartphone game, but will likely have very little impact on the smartphone market. HP has agreed to pay $1.2 billion for loss-making Palm, best known in recent years as the investment target of U2 lead singer Bono. The firm only sold 2.4 million smartphones in the last 12-month period, giving it just over 1 percent of the market.

In the last few years all top PC vendors — including Acer, Lenovo and Dell — have rushed to the surging smartphone market hoping to boost profits. So far only Apple has succeeded, and it has taken over two years for it to build up global phone distribution.

Top smartphone vendors Nokia, RIM and Apple boast much higher profit margins than PC vendors. HP’s gross margin for its most recent quarter was 22.8 percent, just half Research in Motion’s 45.7 percent margin, while Apple’s was 41.7 percent.