Belgium’s Solvay is selling its drugs unit to U.S. partner Abbott Laboratories for 4.5 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in cash and reinvest in chemicals and plastics. Sources familiar with the deal have earlier told Reuters Abbott had agreed to buy the unit to bloster its flagging prescription drug business.

Australia’s biggest department store chain Myer plans to raise up to $2 billion in a share offering that will test investor appetite for retail stocks.

In M&A news reported by Reuters and elsewhere on Monday: 

* A Saudi prince is set to spend up to 350 million pounds ($558 million) to buy a 50 percent stake in English soccer club Liverpool, al-Riyadh newspaper quoted him as saying on Sunday. 

* Kraft Foods Inc (KFT.N) is poised to launch a hostile bid for Cadbury  (CBRY.L) valuing the British confectionery business at around 11 billion pounds ($17.6 billion), a report in The Observer newspaper says. 

* Italian cable maker Prysmian (PRY.MI) has 1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in liquidity to fund growth and is eying acquisitions in high-growth areas such as Russia, the company’s chief executive told Sunday’s Il Sole 24 Ore. 

* Russia’s Rusal, the world’s top aluminium producer controlled by Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, is ready to file a prospectus for a Hong Kong listing, which will value the firm at $30 billion, the Sunday Times said. 

* ENN Solar, the solar cell company controlled by the chairman of Xinao Gas Holdings (2688.HK), could seek a listing in Hong Kong as early as the middle of next year, the South China Morning Post reports.

* Agricultural Bank of China, the only big state lender that has yet to float shares, plans to list only in Shanghai and will not list any shares in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reports.

(Update: Dell PR misspoke about Johnson's responsibilities, and we've made changes below as indicated.)

Dell, which announced plans to buy Perot Systems for $3.9 billion on Monday, completed the deal without help from an executive in charge of mergers and acquisitions.

It's a touchy subject for Dell, which earlier this year named David Johnson to its executive team, poaching him from IBM where he served as head of M&A. IBM filed a lawsuit, saying that Johnson violated a non-compete agreement by taking the job with Dell. But IBM failed to persuade a judge to bar Johnson from working at Dell while the litigation is pending.

CEO Michael Dell told reporters on a conference call that Johnson was not involved in the Perot transaction "in any way," noting that the two companies had held discussions back in 2007, while Johnson was still at IBM. "It was not a new idea," Dell said.  But the discussions heated up again over the summer, after Johnson joined Dell.

Reuters asked Dell spokesman David Frink how Dell could negotiate a $3.9 billion deal, its biggest ever, without involvement from Johnson, its head of M&A. He said that Michael Dell and Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden had led a group of other executives who worked on the deal.

He added: "We don't have a head of M&A."

When asked what Johnson does for Dell, Frink said: "We don't spending a lot of time talking about what he is focused on"

What is his title? "Head of corporate planning and development," Frink said.

Does that area include M&A? "Yes."

Frink initially said Johnson's job included M&A, but he called back later to say Johnson had no such responsibility. The M&A group reports to Chief Financial Officer Gladden, he added. There still is no head of M&A.

Nobody hates cars as much as the car industry does these days. The business is crippling some of its biggest players and behold the dearth of industry names queuing up to buy other automakers.

Opel in Germany is being sold yet are Volkswagen, Porsche, BMW or Daimler anywhere to be found? Spot the empty parking lot.

Without the Chinese, auto sector M&A right now is about as exciting as a 1981 Yugo.

Some makers still have money though, so what has everybody racing to get away?

Bad experiences, in part.

The last really big deal where two car companies merged was DaimlerChrysler in 1998. It’s best remembered this way: Spent a lot of dimes, did a lot of crying. Disaster and divorce. 

A great article written years after the deal revealed telltale signs of the troubles in store for that marriage when even the order of the name – which should go first – threatened to break up the talks.

But good old fashioned sectoral M&A is being thwarted by something more than good old fashioned fear and loathing. It’s self-loathing. The industry’s top names have already gobbled up the companies they wanted – Jaguar, Lamborghini, Bentley.

U.S. and European makers are all out of love partly because their long established businesses at home are not making the big bucks. What they want now is emerging market growth, China preferred.

Just look at the reform plans of General Motors. Keep Buick, kill Pontiac. This was an astounding choice from a U.S. marketing perspective.

Pontiac has trounced Buick in U.S. sales forever. Cool people drive Pontiacs, or at least people who used to be cool. Burt Reynolds drove a Trans-Am in Smokey & the Bandit in 1977 and the tyres are still hot.

On the other hand, if you have an uncle who wears white shoes and belt and likes to make out he’s well off but isn’t, he drives a Buick.

He’ll tell you it’s just like a Cadillac. And you’ll ask ‘Then why didn’t you buy a Cadillac?’ He’ll try to avoid saying because he couldn’t afford one. And your mother will ask why can’t the family just get along.

But Buick is GM’s big badge in China, and that’s where it is placing its bets. Why aren’t German carmakers buying German carmakers and Americans U.S. ones? Because they don’t want to be in Germany or the United States, they want to grow abroad.

Don’t be fooled by Fiat. Yes it now has a stake in Chrysler, but it came to the table empty handed. The Obama Administration needed a “front” – an industry buyer to feign deep faith in the future of Chrysler – to make it politically feasible for it to fork over the billions in taxpayer money needed to keep the maker of Dodge trucks on life support.

Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne saw this and stepped forward. He similarly had his eye on European government funding when he put up his hand for Opel. You guys pay and I’ll own it. You have to give the guy credit.

It’s tough under such terms to think of these deals as strategic industrial tie-ups, they’re purely opportunistic. And the Germans at least realised this and thought better of doing a deal.

Fiat, not having sold one of its brand in America since 1983, now returns to a vastly different market from the one it fled from in despair.

If they thought it was tough back then, just wait until they try selling in a market where the Japanese have plants churning out cars and trucks across the country and the South Koreans, a complete non-entity before, now sell about 700,000 cars a year.

European whispering about how Fiat might “introduce” small cars to America misses out the last 35 years of change in the U.S. market.

Which is a good place to turn to the Chinese, who currently are not missing out on anything.

By the time Fiat sells its first car in Ohio, Chinese ships will be docking full of smaller, cheaper rival models that will drive Fiat into the weeds. There’s a chance the Chinese ships could outnumber the Fiats that get bought.

The Chinese have taken years gearing up. They bought the UK’s MG-Rover, want GM’s Hummer SUV maker, and are now eyeing an indirect slice of Saab.

More importantly, they have partnered at home with all the big names – VW, Ford, Daimler, GM, Hyundai – and that has fostered expertise that sets up the next phase of growth – exports of their own brands such as Chery, Geely and Changan.

You may not know these names now, but you will soon. No American knew what a Daewoo or Kia was 10 years ago either. The Chinese will put the wind up the Americans, Europeans, Japanese and South Koreans. India also risks being left behind in its similar yet still nascent dream of dominance in the cheap auto export market.

A good rule of thumb is that any nation that can build nuclear plants, rockets and submarines can export a passable hatchback.

Russia hasn’t, that’s true, but China has one critically important advantage – the ardent desire of Western and Asian firms for a slice of the massive Chinese market.

There’s a quid pro quo there that’s likely to clear the way for more Chinese takeovers and their inevitable export push.

U.S. and European companies want partnerships and a nod for access in China, and in return will tell Washington and Brussels it’s cool with them if Chinese firms come knocking.

China’s makers are about to and the appetite of global automakers for Chinese takeaways is already plain to see.

This post was written by Jason Neely.

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?

The world’s second largest confectionery group Cadbury has rejected a $16.7 billion bid approach by Kraft Food. But North America’s top food group still hopes it can clinch a deal to create a global powerhouse in snacks and quick meals.

For more from Reuters on the latest deals, click here.

Below is a round-up of all the market chatter from the press on Monday:

* South Korea’s No. 4 lender Hana Bank will buy a 18.44 percent stake in the Bank of Jilin in northern China for $316 million, said Yonhap news, citing an unnamed Hana Bank official.

* Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s carmaker, GAZ, the Russian industrial partner in a Magna-led bid for Germany’s Opel, is not interested in an equity stake in Opel, Deripaska told Vedomosti newspaper.

* Huntsman, an American chemicals group, is looking to buy chemical plants in China with part of a $2.7 billion compensation package, said senior executive Paul Hulme in a Financial Times interview.

* Senior lenders to Incisive Media have entered into a lock-up over a deal to take control of the business-to-business publisher, reported the Daily Telegraph, without citing sources.

* Leading Indian engineering firm Larsen & Toubro is in talks to buy a thermal coal mine in Australia for about $300 million, the Economic Times reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

* British Airways is considering a possible bid for rival UK airline bmi and talks between BA and bmi’s German owner, Lufthansa, have already taken place, according to the Times.

* A group of Asian investors are in the final stage of buying a 46 percent stake in Kuwaiti telecom firm Zain, Al-Arabiya television reported on Sunday.

* The managing director of Lloyds’ specialist finance arm is considering a management buyout of its integrated finance unit and Lloyds is mulling options to raise cash, two British papers said in separate reports on Sunday.

* British bank HSBC has made a bid of about 1 billion pounds ($1.63 billion) for Dutch financial group ING’s private banking businesses, according to a report in The Sunday Times.

* Xstrata has asked its bankers to study the viability of a new 3 billion pounds ($4.90 billion) bid for platinum producer Lonmin, according to the Observer newspaper on Sunday.

There are signs of life returning to M&A in the potash sector -- with market speculation that Potash Corp of Saskatchewan may bid for Germany's K+S.

Canada's Potash Corp -- the world's largest producer of the key ingredient in synthetic crop fertiliser -- said last month that North American potash inventories had fallen in July, an indication that sales of potash had begun to move again after a seizing up of the market.

Some analysts reckon that the market is now reaching a bottom and that there will be a sharp rebound in 2010 as farmers start buying again.

K+S Chief Executive Norbert Steiner told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that the world's fourth-largest potash supplier saw an end to a decline in prices in Europe, but that demand remains depressed.

And K+S is not in the strongest position right now. The company is looking at a capital increase as one of a clutch of measures to bolster its balance sheet following its acquisition of Morton Salt from Dow Chemical.

With K+S trading at just over 35 euros/share compared with a price of nearly 84 euros/share a year ago, it is probably time for Potash Corp to at least take a look.

There is also renewed speculation that Potash Corp itself could be taken over by a mining company.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says General Motors “urgently” needs to decide on Opel’s future, while specialty drugmaker Warner Chilcott moves to acquire Procter & Gamble’s $3 billion prescription-drug business.

For these stories, and all the rest of the latest deals news from Reuters, click here.

And here’s what caught our eye in the newspapers (some external links may require subscriptions):

* Harvard University’s multibillion-dollar endowment is adopting a strategy of selling off some holdings in hedge funds, private-equity firms and other money managers to bring more money under the control of internal investing staff over the next few years, the Wall Street Journal said.

* Entrepreneur Clive Cowdery’s Resolution (RSL.L) has held early stage talks with Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) over the sale of its Clerical Medical unit, the Mail on Sunday reported, citing an unnamed source.

* Betfair, the world’s largest online gaming exchange, is considering a 1.5 billion pound ($2.5 billion) flotation in the UK, the Sunday Telegraph reported, citing no sources.

* Victor Blank, outgoing chairman of Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L), said the bank’s board was behind the decision to buy HBOS, not the UK government. Sunday Times story here.

* British merchant bank Close Brothers has made a bid for Kleinwort Benson, a private bank being sold by Commerzbank AG (CBKG.DE), the Sunday Times reported, citing no sources.

European bankers may be having more conversations that could lead to M&A than six months ago, but this week’s deal figures from Thomson Reuters still make dismal reading.

So far this year, European M&A has been worth $356.6 billion, a 51% fall compared to last year at this time. Excluding government investments, merger activity in Europe totals $239.1 billion, a 67 percent decrease from 2008 levels.

Here is another of this week’s data points:

“Germany’s E.on has agreed to sell its natural gas distribution subsidiary, Thuega AG, to a group of German utility companies for $4.1 billion, topping the list of worldwide mergers this week. Goldman Sachs, which advised Thuega, and @visory Partners GmbH, which advised the consortium, could share an estimated $30 million to $35 million in advisory fees on completion of the deal.

Buyout firm Resolution raises its offer for UK insurer Friends Provident to about 2 billion pounds, and the two sides start talks about a possible deal.

The following are M&A related stories reported by Reuters and other media:

Lloyds Banking Group may consider a multi-billion pound share issue as part of a partial withdrawal from the government’s asset protection scheme, according to a report in the Sunday Times.

U.S. power producer Dynegy will sell nine U.S. power plants to its one-time development partner LS Power Associates, the Wall Street Journal says.

Japan’s largest chemicals firm Mitsubishi Chemical is in talks to buy resin maker Mitsubishi Rayon in a deal worth up to $2.1 billion, the Nikkei business daily says.

Financial services firm Edelweiss Capital is in talks with Japanese insurance group Tokio Marine for a possible joint venture in life insurance, a newspaper reported.

German railways operator Deutsche Bahn is unlikely to list on the stock exchange before 2013, the group’s chief executive said in an interview. Click here for the Reuters story.

Libya and India’s Essar are both bidders for Shell’s Stanlow refinery in the UK, according to a report in the Sunday Times. Click here for the Reuters story.

UK stockbroker Astaire Securities, formerly known as Blue Oar, is mulling a bid for rival Daniel Stewart, according to a report in the Independent on Sunday.

An unusual Credit Suisse Group compensation plan could lead to hefty year-end payouts for bankers, The Wall Street Journal said. The newspaper said that the bank told 2,000 top bankers that a $5 billion fund of toxic mortgages and bonds, which it granted as a big portion of 2008 pay, has returned 17 percent since January, citing people familiar with the matter.

The following M&A related stories were reported by media on Friday:

French advertising group Publicis  is poised to buy U.S. digital specialist Razorfish from Microsoft Corp, Les Echos reported in its Friday edition.

Citigroup Inc may give control of its Phibro commodities business to Andrew Hall, the energy trader making headlines for demanding a $100 million payday under his contract, The New York Times said, citing a person with knowledge of the negotiations.

British care home operator Four Seasons Healthcare is close to an agreement with creditors to halve its 1.5 billion pounds ($2.55 billion) of debt, the Financial Times reported.