DealZone

The world’s largest generic drugmaker, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries plans to buy U.S. specialty drugmaker Cephalon for $6.8 billion,  topping an unsolicited bid by Canadian rival Valeant Pharmaceuticals International.

Warner Music’s $3 billion buyout could be done by the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the matter. Final buyout bids for the company are due today. Warner Music’s board effectively put itself up for sale in January when it appointed Goldman Sachs and AGM Partners to assess interest from external parties.

Danisco, the Danish food ingredients and enzymes producer urged shareholders to accept a higher takeover bid from chemicals group DuPont as fund managers welcomed the “decent offer” and said it would likely succeed. DuPont raised its offer for Danisco by 5 percent to 700 Danish crowns ($139) per share from 665, making its cash offer worth $6.64 billion.

Arch Coal said it will acquire International Coal Group in a $3.4 billion all-cash transaction to create the second-largest U.S. producer of steel-making coal. The news boosted International Coal shares in premarket trading.

Quest Diagnostics announced last month it would buy genetic-testing firm Celera Corp for $671 million, but word of a crucial scientific study helped the company negotiate a nearly $200 million discount in its deal. In this Wall Street Journal article, author John Jannarone asks, just how did Quest learn of the study months prior to its official publication?

Pfizer will present a nearly $4 billion offer for Germany’s Ratiopharm this week, sources tell Reuters, launching a possible bidding war with Teva Pharmaceutical and Actavis. A decision is unlikely before the end of the month.

Hedge fund Elliot Associates offers to buy Novell Inc — the world’s No. 2 maker of Linux — sending its shares up 28 percent. Speculation is that other bidders could come in and drive the price up further.

Britain’s Prudential seems to have stopped its decline after it announced a $35.5 billion takeover of AIA — the Asian life insurance business of AIG. The stock dropped a fifth since the Pru announced its offer, but it’s now bounced a percent or so.

It looks like Merrill Lynch has made up its mind regarding its house-cleaning priorities. The investment bank is expected to announce on Thursday that it will sell its 20 percent stake in Bloomberg LP back to the news and financial data company for about $4.5 billion, a source familiar with the matter said. No one on either side is talking, but selling the Bloomberg stake could help Merrill Chief Executive John Thain raise capital to make up for write-downs related in part to subprime mortgages. It is not immediately clear what role, if any, New York Mayor and Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg (pictured), who still owns about 70 percent of the company, has played in the Merrill transaction. Merrill also owns a substantial stake in money manager BlackRock Inc, but BlackRock, the largest publicly traded asset management company in the United States, said on Thursday that Merrill had decided against selling the stake. Merrill reports earnings later in the day.

Shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries fell nearly 1 percent on Thursday after reports it was in talks to buy rival Barr Phamaceuticals for up to $7.5 billion. TheMarker and Globes financial newspapers reported online overnight that Israel-based Teva, the world’s biggest maker of generic drugs, was in talks to buy New Jersey-based Barr in what would be a further consolidation of the generic drugs industry. TheMarker put the price tag at $7.5 billion, citing capital market sources. That would make it Teva’s biggest acquisition, surpassing the $7.4 billion purchase of Ivax two years ago. Globes cited a price of $7 billion to $7.5 billion. Barr has a market value of $5.1 billion.

And it’s starting to get ugly in Europe. Continental Chief Executive Manfred Wennemer withdrew from the public eye on Thursday to plot his defense against an unwanted $18 billion bid from family-owned Schaeffler Group. If Schaeffler succeeds in buying the group, which is three times its size, it would be the first time a German family business has taken over a company listed on the country’s blue-chip DAX index. But Schaeffler’s advances have stirred resentment at Continental’s headquarters in Hanover, sparking a war of words between both sides. On Wednesday, Continental’s Wennemer hit back at the offer, saying it was too low and warning that the predator could ultimately dismantle Continental. Schaeffler, owned by German billionaire Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, countered it had no such plans, labeling Wennemer’s tone “incomprehensible”.