DealZone

Asian bourses are bracing for more insurance IPOs over the next year, after AIA’s expected record offer next month, with regulatory changes and higher capital requirements forcing companies to tap stock markets.

“This is going to be the age of IPOs. There is more to come in Korea, China and India as well,” one banker said. *View article * View article on NAB pulling out of AXA unit bid *View WSJ article on AIG’s expedited plans to pay back taxpayers

The share price of Sohu.com, China’s No.2 online portal, is too low for the company to consider putting itself up for sale, its chief executive said amid a 15 percent jump in its shares over the past month on buyout rumors. *View article

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” Gordon Gekko said in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie “Wall Street.” The NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin sits down with Oliver Stone for a late lunch at the Grill Room in New York to discuss how things have changed. Stone’s new movie “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” opens next week. *View article

With just a few days left, the first quarter of 2009 has been as miserable for the U.S. IPO market as the last few quarters were.

The first three months of the year saw one solitary IPO- a grand slam to be sure, an $828 million (including over-allotments) deal by kids food maker Mead Johnson Nutrition. In contrast, the first quarter of 2008, when IPO flow was already starting to fall off a cliff, had 10 deals yield a total of $20.6 billion.

It was the second quarter in a row to see only one deal, the first time such a six-month drought has happened this decade.