DealZone

Japan’s Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal plan to merge to create the world’s second-largest steelmaker in an effort to fend off tough competition from Asian rivals and offset shrinking demand from domestic automakers.

Sanofi-Aventis could announce a deal to buy Genzyme early next week if final negotiations between the companies go smoothly, Le Figaro reported.

The quote of the day goes to Infineon’s CEO explaining why the chipmaker is not at risk of a hostile takeover. “We are more of a shark and the others are the goldfish,” he told reporters.

Nomura is evolving into a global investment bank, even if it doesn’t yet look like one, writes columnist John Foley.

Peabody Energy has raised its offer for Macarthur Coal by 14 percent to $3.8 billion — trumping a sweetened offer from local rival New Hope Corp.  In order for the deal to go through, Macarthur must ditch a vote on a proposed takeover of Gloucester Coal, a smaller local rival. The vote had been delayed to April 19.

R0bert Hingley — outgoing director general of the UK’s Takeover Panel — is joining Lazard’s financial advisory group, Lazard says. All the more interesting as senior Lazard banker Peter Kiernan is set to become the Panel’s new head. But his arrival has been delayed, ever since British lawmakers started probing Kraft’s takeover of British chocolatier Cadbury — a deal Kiernan was one of the main architects for.

Royal Bank of Scotland is whittling down the list of suitors for its 3 billion pound payment processing firm WorldPay, sources tell us. UK payments firm Voice Commerce and other suitors have dropped out of the running.

Resource nationalism, China’s continuing hunger for commodities and the endless search for growth were dominant themes at the Mining and Steel Summit. Here are some stories from the summit:

*  Miners grapple with resource nationalism
*  China keen to invest in SAfrica mines
*  AngloGold may split ops, eyes Americas
*  Movie “Avatar” has few fans among mining execs

Great reads from the Web:

Bankruptcy Watch: Waiting for the Next Big Wave (WSJ)
“It is fashionable to look at the relative dearth in recent bankruptcy activity and declare an end to the financial crisis’s restructuring wave.” – WSJ

BHP announced an all-share offer valuing Rio at about $193 billion last November, as mining boomed worldwide. BHP said the risk of taking on Rio’s much heavier debts, and the low prices it could expect from asset sales forced on it by regulators, were among the factors behind the decision to abandon the bid.

The decision could have far-reaching consequences for consolidation in the industry, writes Reuters’ John Kemp.

“For more than two decades, merger policy in the EU and around the world has become progressively more permissive, as regulators cited new theories of market “contestability” to permit accumulation of market shares that would have been blocked had they been proposed in the 1960s and 1970s.