Attention cats and dogs: this deal affects you. 

Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim is now the front-runner to buy certain animal health assets of Fort Dodge, which makes drugs like ProMeris, ProHeart 6 and the Duramune vaccine line, sources told Reuters. 

The assets are being sold by Wyeth to gain approval for its $68 billion merger with Pfizer. 

Wyeth is not selling its entire Fort Dodge business, just certain assets within the unit that are valued at roughly $400 million to $500 million, the sources said.  

Bidder Novartis has dropped out, while Bayer’s interest appears to be waning, the sources said. 

 The talks are yet another sign that animal health, long dismissed as a secondary business, is coming out of the doghouse. 

French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis last week expanded its animal health business by buying the other half of Merial from its U.S. partner Merck for $4 billion in cash. The two firms also may create a pet and livestock joint venture that could be a leader in the $19 billion animal health market.

From Acquisitions Monthly

Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceuticals company, is lining up Turkey’s largest drugs company, Abdi Ibrahim, for a deal, according to an M&A banking source.

There are no talks so far, and what form a potential tie-up would take is not yet known.

Only last month the president of Pfizer’s emerging markets business unit revealed that the drugs company was considering new acquisitions.

“We see opportunities coming from the financial crisis… opportunities to build partnerships in emerging markets,”

Jean-Michel Haldon told Reuters in June. He did not give further details at the time, but under the stewardship of chairman and chief executive Jeff Kindler, Pfizer wants to add $3 billion in annual revenue by 2012 from emerging markets, which include China, Brazil and Turkey.

Family-owned Abdi Ibrahim – which is run by its president Nezih Barut and has annual sales of around $850 million – would certainly provide Pfizer with that additional source of income.
Turkey’s pharma market also remains hugely fragmented and is ripe for consolidation.  Abdi Ibrahim may be Turkey’s market leader, but it only has 7 percent of the country’s estimated $11 billion pharmaceutical market.  Hot on its heels are the likes of Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis.

The big multi-nationals are increasingly looking to the developing markets for growth as they face stiffer competition from generic drug makers, patent expiries, and a pressing need to reinvigorate their drug pipelines – all reasons why Pfizer bought Wyeth in January for $68 billion.  Pfizer’s best-selling anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor indeed expires in 2011. While a source close to Pfizer would neither confirm nor deny the company’s bid interest, Pfizer’s chief spokesperson Ray Kerins predictably would not comment on what he described as rumor. As for Abdi Ibrahim, all of its 2829 employees seem to have gone off on holiday.   “Welcome to Abdi Ibrahim,” said a corporate voice mail.  “Abdi Ibrahim’s headquarters will be closed from 6 to 20 July due to corporate summer vacation.”

Companies may look cheap in the newly minted bear market, but Dow Chemical isn’t taking any chances with Rohm and Haas. The $18.8 billion deal at $78 per share is a 74 percent premium to the paint specialist’s closing price of $44.83 on Wednesday. If the deal wasn’t rich enough, buy-in from Omaha oracle Warren Buffett and sovereign wealth fund the Kuwait Investment Authority, in the form of convertible preferred securities for $3 billion and $1 billion, respectively, should drown out any naysayers, though it’s tough to imagine who could challenge the deal. CEO Andrew Liveris is keen to move Dow away from basic chemicals and towards higher margin specialty chemicals. Dow said the deal would be “meaningfully accretive” to earnings in the second year after it closes, with pre-tax synergies expected to be at least $800 million per year.

Novartis plans to buy its research partner, Swiss biotech company Speedel, for about $880 million to speed up development of potential blockbuster blood-pressure drug Tekturna. Speedel shares surged more than 90 percent to the offer price after the latest in a string of big pharma acquisitions of promising start-up drug development companies. Cash-rich major drugmakers have been queuing up to invest in medicines to fill their thinning pipelines — and the biotech sector has been hit by the global downturn in equity markets, fuelling takeover speculation. Shares in Novartis, which is keen to shore up its franchise in treating high blood pressure as its top-selling Diovan faces generic competition when it loses exclusivity in 2012, fell slightly as markets viewed the buy as expensive.

Other deals of the day:

* Canada’s Precision Drilling Trust said it will immediately reapproach U.S. oil driller Grey Wolf with its $10-a-share takeover offer if Grey Wolf’s shareholders vote down a proposed merger with Basic Energy Services.

* Bidders for Rio Tinto’s U.S. coal unit, Energy America, have a deadline of the end of business to lodge interest in the asset, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

* Opnext, which makes fiber optic network components, said it agreed to buy privately held StrataLight Communications in a cash and stock deal valued at $172 million.

* Residential Capital, the mortgage lending arm of GMAC, said a GMAC affiliate has agreed to acquire its resort finance business.

* Porsche will be one step closer to acquiring majority control of Volkswagen on Sept. 2, when its deal to buy 4.9 pct of that company’s ordinary shares takes effect.

* Keeley Asset Management, which made its name by selecting small and forgotten companies, said that it took an 18 percent stake in beleaguered money manager Pzena Investment Management.

* Index Ventures, Europe’s best-known high-tech venture capital firm, has bought a small stake in technology online publisher Bestofmedia for 22.5 million euros ($35.4 million) to help it fund acquisitions.

* China’s Hangzhou Trust has agreed to sell a 19.9 pct stake to Morgan Stanley for about 200 million yuan ($29.2 million), the Chinese company’s chairman said.

* Canada’s Cameco and Japan’s Mitsubishi said they will jointly acquire Kintyre uranium exploration project in Western Australia from Rio Tinto for $495 million.

* Steel and coal firm Coal of Africa is unaware of a reported 235 pence-a-share bid from the world’s largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal, Coal said.

Lehman Brothers is looking for fresh capital in South Korea, the Wall Street Journal reports. If the investment bank does end up tapping South Korea, it will have taken slightly over a decade for the 1997 multibillion loan from the IMF, backed by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, to come full circle. The Journal says Lehman is looking to state-run Korea Development Bank and Woori Financial Group as it searches for funds to ward off a Bear Stearnsian crisis of confidence. The IMF demanded strict economic reforms for its money. A South Korean lender, like the Chinese and Arab investors bailing out Citi and Merrill Lynch, might just want a juicier cut.

The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup — with a side of Smuckers jelly. The maker of Jif peanut butter and Crisco oil said it would buy Folgers from Procter & Gamble for stock valued at $2.95 billion plus the assumption of $350 million in debt. J.M. Smucker & Co also acquired Jif and Crisco from P&G.

Yahoo set its annual shareholder meeting for Aug. 1 in the heart of Silicon Valley, as it braced for a proxy showdown with billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn. Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that Icahn would seek to remove Jerry Yang as Yahoo chief executive, citing the company’s failure to reach a merger or partnership deal with Microsoft. Icahn had proposed an alternate slate of directors for Yahoo’s board, but until now had not directly targeted Yang. “It’s no longer a mystery to me why Microsoft’s offer isn’t around,” the Journal quoted Icahn as saying. “How can Yahoo keep saying they’re willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they’re completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone?”

Novartis has bought privately held biotech company Protez Pharmaceuticals in a deal worth up to $400 million, giving it rights to an antibiotic which could be used to fight superbugs. Protez has a broad-spectrum antibiotic given by injection that is currently in mid-stage Phase II development against drug-resistant infections, and Novartis hopes to submit it for regulatory approval in 2012. The Swiss group will pay $100 million immediately for the business, with a potential for up to $300 million of additional payments depending on the future success of the new drug with the catchy code name: PZ-601.

Corporate Express will open its books to U.S. office supplies retailer Staples, which has made an unsolicited bid for the Dutch office goods wholesaler, Het Financieele Dagblad reports. On Tuesday, Staples raised its offer to 9.15 euros a share, or 1.7 billion euros ($2.65 billion), on the condition that Corporate Express shareholders reject the company’s plan to buy privately owned French peer Lyreco. The paper added that Corporate Express will probably give a neutral recommendation to its shareholders about the bid.

Other deals of the day:

* Australia’s Warrnambool Cheese and Butter Factory said it and National Foods, owned by Japan’s Kirin Holdings, would jointly pursue a bid for Australian dairy producer Dairy Farmers.

* Chinese metals trader Sinosteel said it has raised its stake in Midwest Corp to 28.37 percent from 19.89 percent as it seeks to take over the Australian iron ore prospector.

* AXA Asia Pacific, unit of French insurer AXA SA, said it would buy the financial planning business of Challenger Financial Group for A$100 million ($95 million) and in exchange for AXA’s annuity portfolio.

Until today, Portfolio.com’s Felix Salmon had no idea that there was a mega-billion dollar eye care company called Alcon — but when he pulls out his calculator he comes up with some interesting numbers:

“On a valuation level, let’s say that the population of the world is 6.6 billion, and let’s exclude the ‘bottom billion’ for the time being as people who are never going to avail themselves of Alcon’s products. That leaves 5.5 billion people, with 11 billion eyeballs between them. Which would mean that Alcon is valued at over $4 per global eyeball. Nice.”

For the record, Reuters reports that Novartis is buying Nestle’s 77 percent stake in Alcon for $39 billion — $11 billion up front, and $28 billion between January 2010 and July 2011 — which would imply a $50.64 billion total valuation, rather than the $45 billion figure Salmon uses.

The deal cost Novartis its triple-A credit rating, and loaded up Nestle’s acquisition war chest.

(Photo:  Reuters/Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan plays with fake eyeball)