If you want to take a bite out of Apple’s piece of the staggeringly huge (but difficult to quantify in $$$ terms) smartphone market pie, you’d better either have the magical new “thing” or be willing to spend to buy it.

As Anupreeta Das reports, Palm – one of the stalwart originals in the mobile handset space — has remade itself into a terrific target with the success of its Pre. Palm’s stock got a jolt this week on talk that Nokia could be considering a bid. But as she explains, Palm may prove to be too pricey a purchase, even for those with deep pockets.

Since introducing the Pre, Dell, Microsoft, Nokia and Motorola have been mentioned as possible suitors. If one of these cash-rich companies was to bid for Palm today, it would be targeting a stock that has quadrupled this year. Complicating matters, “details on how many units it has sold are skimpy, making it difficult to value the success of Palm’s turnaround story,” she reports.

Palm’s market capitalization is $2.4 billion. Based on the average 34 percent premium that technology, media and telecommunications companies have been sold for this year, according to Thomson Reuters data, this means a price tag of about $3.2 billion.

Dell is already in the early stages of buying up Perot Systems, but will still have nearly $7 billion in cash on hand should it choose to go on a spree. Microsoft, while a cagey customer, as shown in its dealings with Yahoo, has buckets more. For big tech players, the price itself is not the problem.

“To them, Palm is a thousand-dollar used model locomotive. Now you have to buy the other cars, and the tracks, and fake trees, etc. You have enough to pay for it, but you don’t even know if it works properly,” said a guy here at Reuters when the subject was being kicked around.

Sometimes it’s easy to sniff at $70 million, particularly when you have government loans of $80 billion to repay (while the total size of the AIG bailout was closer to $180 billion, much of that consists of toxic mortgage assets that are now owned by U.S. taxpayer). So news that AIG has agreed to sell its Hong Kong consumer finance and India-based IT services units for that amount may seem to be a paltry offer for discussion, even in the blogosphere.

It’s not as if the well is dry on the M&A front. Microsoft and Nokia are set to announce a tie-up of some sort - assumed to have to do with office apps on Nokia phones - and UBS is inking a deal to get it out of the tax-haven doghouse with U.S. authorities.

But spare a thought for poor AIG nonetheless. AIG Financial Products said this week it had completed the sale of its energy and infrastructure investment assets for net proceeds of about $1.9 billion - better than a 1 percent chunk of its total bill to U.S. taxpayers, but the division blamed for so much still has mountains of assets to unload. And it has stepped up plans to list its Asian insurance unit, American International Assurance, in Hong Kong after failing to find a buyer for a large stake in it earlier this year.

Nobody said dismantling Hank Greenberg’s empire would be easy or even a compelling thing to watch. But at its current rate of divestment, the only thing more mind-boggling than the amount of money it owes to taxpayers is the potential time it might take to raise that kind of money.

Nortel Networks Corp, for years a wallflower as rivals in the telecom-equipment business paired up, has found new popularity now that it’s in bankruptcy. The first of Nortel’s parts to be sold off, the wireless technology unit alone has attracted at least three bids ranging from $650 million to $730 million. It is set to be auctioned in about an hour.

European telecom equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia Siemens have made offers, along with U.S. private equity firm MatlinPatterson. Canada’s Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, is protesting the process, saying it has effectively been blocked from making a $1.1 billion bid.

“There’s a lot of delicious irony associated with what’s happening now,” said Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst. “Everybody shows up for the funeral, but no one goes to visit the patients in hospital before they actually die.”

From an analysis by Susan Taylor

Fresh from having Yahoo slip through its fingers, Microsoft’s plan to leapfrog into Consumerville takes another hit with news that Nokia is paying 264 million euros ($410 million) to buy out other shareholders of Symbian, the dominant player in smartphone software. Nokia says it will dissolve royalty payments for the platform, making it more attractive when compared to Google’s rival free platform, Android. Symbian’s operating systemis already used in two-thirds of smartphones; Nokia makes 40 percent of all phones sold globally. “This puts a lot of pressure on Microsoft right at a time when they are trying to really push into the consumer space,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. “For operators this offers a good alternative to Android.”

British gas producer BG Group launched a hostile $13.1 billion bid for Australia’s Origin Energy, as it seeks to boost its position in Asia-Pacific’s fast-growing gas market. BG is taking its A$13.8 billion all-cash bid, valuing Origin at A$15.50 a share, direct to shareholders after Origin’s board rejected it last month. Origin claimed then that its coal seam gas reserves alone were worth over $15 billion. Shares in Origin, which have surged over 85 percent this year, rose 6.2 percent to a record A$16.48 before closing up 5.8 percent at A$16.42, indicating investors expect an even higher offer. If successful, the deal would be the second-largest foreign takeover of an Australian company after Cemex, North America’s largest cement producer, bought Rinker Group last year for $14.2 billion.

Russian oil major Lukoil bought a 49 percent stake in Italian refiner ERG SpA’s Mediterranean plant for 1.35 billion euros ($2.1 billion), in a sign of the growing energy ties between Russia and Italy. Lukoil and ERG, Italy’s second-biggest refiner by market share, agreed a joint venture valued at 2.75 billion euros to control ERG’s Isab di Priolo refinery on Sicily. ERG will have 51 percent of the new company.

Other deals of the day:

* UBS said it had acquired Dutch wealth manager VermogensGroep.

* French aero engine and telecoms maker Safran said it had bought Dutch-based passport and secure ID document maker Sdu-Identifaction.

* Shares in China Oilfield Services, an arm of the CNOOC, jumped more than 3 percent as speculation grew about a potential takeover of Norwegian offshore driller Awilco Offshore.

* South Korean food group Dongwon said it will buy canned tuna company StarKist from Del Monte Foods for about $300 million, in the latest push by South Korean food makers for global expansion.

* Australian zinc and lead miner Perilya rejected as inadequate a takeover proposal from CBH Resources, both companies said, but Perilya left the door open to further talks.

* Flowers Foods, which produces baked goods, said it agreed to acquire Holsum Bakery in a cash and stock deal.

* Italy’s Banca Popolare dell’Emilia Romagna will launch a buyout offer for the 71.8 percent of its Meliorbanca unit it does not already own at 3.2 euros per share, BPER said.

* Hospital operator Tenet Healthcare said it will sell its interest in health care services company Broadlane Inc to TowerBrook Capital Partners for proceeds of about $155 million.

* Occidental Petroleum said it is buying a stake in a major Canadian oil sands project for C$500 million ($492 million), giving it a foothold in one of the world’s biggest developing oil plays as crude prices surge.

* Digimarc, a provider of secure identity technology, said it is spinning off its digital watermarking business as part of a deal with L-1 Identity Solutions, a photo and fingerprint identity equipment maker.

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is in South Korea, where he may or may not be hawking the industrial conglomerate’s century-old appliances division. LG Electronics CEO Nam Yong said his company was “closely watching” developments surrounding the unit’s potential sale. General Electric said earlier this month it may sell or spin off the division, estimated to be worth up to $8 billion. LG, the world’s top maker of household air conditioners, has been talked about as a potential suitor, along with China’s Haier Group. Nam added he had no plans to meet with Immelt. This watching thing appears to be deeply ingrained in LG’s lexicon — the company is also “carefully watching” Nokia amid talk the top-ranked mobile phone maker may cut its prices and reenter the South Korean market.

Shares in Belgian brewer InBev, the world’s second-biggest by volume, lost over three percent after a newspaper reported it could soon start takeover talks with rival Anheuser Busch. Belgian business daily De Tijd reported that InBev’s board was about to decide whether to allow its advisers to start negotiating with Bud. This follows the FT’s report on Friday that InBev was considering a $65-a-share bid and had put together $50 billion in financing. A Busch family member, Adolphus Busch IV, told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday some family members were open to holding talks with InBev but others wanted to keep the status-quo.Germany’s embattled Hypo Real Estate has given its backing to an offer from private equity investor JC Flowers and others to buy almost one quarter of its shares, also declining to give an earnings forecast for 2008. Hypo’s stock price had been under pressure since it surprised investors with subprime-linked writedowns in January. This prompted the investment bank and property lender to look for a committed long-term shareholder to secure its future.

Blackstone Group and Apollo Management are in talks to buy chemicals company Chemtura, the Wall Street Journal reports. The negotiations could fall apart since the parties are still arranging financing and discussing the price tag on the deal, it said. Chemtura, which has a market capitalization of about $1.9 billion, said in December it was pursuing strategic alternatives. Apollo, Blackstone and Chemtura could not be immediately reached for comment.

Shares of British classified advertising directory firm Yell Group rose as much as 5.4 percent on market talk of bid interest from Microsoft. Yell declined to comment. “There is a rumour out there that Microsoft is looking at Yell. The price out there is 220 (pence per share),” a London-based trader said.

Other deals of the day:

* Baugur Group has now concluded that it is not in the best interests of stakeholders to proceed with its offer for Moss Bros and has informed the board of Moss Bros of this decision.

* British military consumables maker Chemring Group said it would buy Scot Inc for $40 million from SMS Industries to boost its presence in the U.S. pyrotechnic market.

* Bemax Resources, an Australian mineral sands producer, said it had recommended a A$301 million ($289 million) takeover offer from Saudi Arabia’s National Titanium Dioxide Company, known as Cristal.