George Soros must see something he likes in Lehman Brothers. Or maybe he just likes a good bargain. Or maybe he’s been talking to activist investor Carl Icahn. Either way, the billionaire financier hiked his stake in the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank to 9.5 million shares as of June 30 from just 10,000 shares, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday. That’s about a 1.4 percent stake. Lehman’s shares are down 75 percent so far this year as it battles through the credit crisis that has battered the balance sheets of many top banks. There was no word from Soros’s Quantum Fund on why he upped the stake, while a Lehman spokesman declined to comment.

Boosting stakes seems to be the play du jour. Hedge fund Harbinger Capital Management has accumulated a 4.9 percent stake in Cablevision Systems Corp, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday, citing regulatory filings. It’s unclear what Harbinger intends to do with its holding, but it may explain some uncharacteristic overtures that Cablevision has made to shareholders in recent months. In July it said it was willing to consider all options, including selling its Rainbow Media unit, home to cable TV networks like AMC and IFC, as well as MSG, which owns venues like Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall. “Everybody was wondering why Jimmy got religion all of a sudden,” one analyst told the Journal.

And one from the trash talk department: Republic Services Inc, the third largest U.S. trash hauler, said on Thursday it had rejected Waste Management Inc’s revised buyout offer. The new proposal continues to undervalue Republic, the company said in a statement. As a result, Republic will not furnish information to or discuss a combination with Waste Management, the biggest U.S. trash hauler. In other words: No thanks.

More deals of the day:

* Irish business services group DCC Plc said it would buy Chevron’s UK oil distribution business for 27.52 million euros ($41 million), in a move analysts saw as an attractive way of boosting earnings.

* Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is in talks to buy German generics drugmaker Stada, Israeli website Globes online reported, sending Stada shares up.

* South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc said it agreed to buy an 8.6 percent stake in Taiwan’s ProMOS Technologies, a stake smaller than the 9.5 percent announced in June.

[Editor's note: This blog post originally referenced a Reuters article reporting that United Parcel Service had dismissed talk of a $15 billion takeover bid for Dutch rival TNT. That article is wrong and has been withdrawn. Reuters accepts that the UPS executive was not commenting specifically on reports that TNT and UPS were in talks.]

Waste Management Inc, the largest U.S. trash hauler, said on Monday it has raised its rejected bid for rival Republic Services Inc by nearly 10 percent, to $6.73 billion. Under the revised offer, Waste Management would acquire all outstanding shares of Republic for $37.00 each, a 32.6 percent premium to Republic’s share price prior to Waste’s first takeover bid. That’s not likely to bring a smile to the face of Bill Gates, a major Republic shareholder through his investment arm, BGI, who last month asked Waste Management to walk away. BGI didn’t mince words in its letter to Waste Management’s CEO and board: “We can only assume your ill-timed and poorly conceived pursuit of Republic is designed to disrupt what you perceive as a competitive threat to your position in the market.”

GATX Corp is offering more than $3 billion for General Electric Co’s rail car leasing business, a source familiar with the discussions said. GATX is the leading bidder for the unit and negotiations are ongoing, the person said. A GE spokesman declined to comment. GATX was not immediately reachable for comment.

Other deals of the day:

* South Korea said it plans to sell a 49 percent stake in state-owned Incheon International Airport Corp, worth about $2 billion, to global airport operators as part of a drive to privatise and reform state-run companies.

* U.S. energy firm Marathon Oil Corp is selling a 20 percent stake in an Angolan oil field that could fetch almost $2 billion, attracting bids from China’s top three oil firms, India’s ONGC and Brazil’s Petrobras, sources close to the matter said.

* Media, entertainment and events group First Artist Corp said it agreed to acquire U.S.-based advertising agency Spot and Company of Manhattan Inc in a reverse takeover for up to $18.86 million in cash.

* Russia’s Gazprom Neft will offer Kazakhstan a stake in one of its own projects in exchange for a 49 percent stake in Kazakh oil firm MangistauMunaiGas (MMG), a senior Gazprom Neft official said.

* Kazakh miner Kazakhmys has increased its stake in domestic peer Eurasian Natural Resources Corp to 25 percent, but has no plans to launch a bid for now, it said.

* Dubai Mercantile Exchange, a joint venture between Oman, Dubai and the New York Mercantile Exchange, said it had sold a 20 percent stake to several financial institutions and energy traders.

* Debt-ridden French drinks group Belvedere is considering selling its Marie Brizard liqueur unit to refocus on its vodka business, business newspaper Les Echos reported, citing several sources.

* Australian farming cooperative Murray Goulburn has made a solo bid for dairy producer Dairy Farmers after its consortium with Italy’s Parmalat fell apart last week, a source familiar with the situation said.

Tech titan Bill Gates appears to be making the transition from head of the biggest software company in the world to a man comfortable taking out the trash. His investment company, BGI, which owns 2.3 percent of Waste Management, is telling the company its unsolicited $6.2 billion bid for Republic Services is ill-advised and that it should walk away. While his investment vehicles have stakes in dozens of companies, they have kept low profiles over the years and Gates has not traditionally been known as an activist investor. But BGI didn’t mince words in its letter to Waste Management’s CEO and board, disclosed on Thursday. “We can only assume your ill-timed and poorly conceived pursuit of Republic is designed to disrupt what you perceive as a competitive threat to your position in the market,” wrote BGI. “An acquisition of Republic will most certainly burden the company with excessive debt, distract your management, result in significant regulatory burdens, and thereby reduce shareholder value,” it said.

Yahoo’s annual investor meeting today will be a magnet for discontent over the company’s failure to reach a merger deal with Microsoft and complaints about the company’s past performance. But any real action to reshape Yahoo’s course is likely to take place only after the meeting, once activist investor Carl Icahn and two outside nominees join an expanded 11-member board as part of a deal with the company to avoid a proxy battle. Far from a showdown over control of Yahoo, the annual meeting has the makings of a noisy media circus where the issue of whether Yahoo should remain independent or not competes with older protests over executive pay and human rights policies. For while the exercise of shareholder democracy will allow investors small and large to vent over what might have been, the outraged speeches are likely to have only symbolic effects since Icahn withdrew his overt challenge to Yahoo’s board. “I am sure that Yahoo management will take a verbal beating,” Jim Friedland, an analyst Cowen & Co, said. “I just don’t think that the annual meeting is where the debate over Yahoo strategy is going to take place.” In a blog post on Thursday, Icahn downplayed the importance of the event, saying he plans to skip the meeting himself.

Spanish solar power company Fotowatio said that General Electric’s Energy Financial Services unit had bought 32 percent of the company for 150 million euros ($233.5 million). Grupo Corporativo Landon — a holding company for the Gallardo family, which owns Barcelona-based pharmaceutical group Almirall — also bought a 17.5 percent stake for 75 million euros, the company added in a statement. Fotowatio said that together with its new partners, it had earmarked 2.5 billion euros to invest by 2012 in photovoltaic and thermosolar plants in Spain, Italy, the United States, and other countries. Currently, the company has four installations, with a total installed capacity of 60 megawatts, which it plans to expand to 800 MW by 2012. Photovoltaic (PV) power has boomed in recent years in Spain due to generous government subsidies, but these will be slashed next year.

Other deals of the day:

* French power giant EDF walked away from a 12 billion pound ($23.8 billion) deal to buy British Energy early on Friday in a dramatic U-turn that could delay Britain’s plans to relaunch its nuclear program.

* Kingfisher, Europe’s biggest home improvements retailer, has agreed to sell its Castorama Italy business to French DIY firm Groupe Adeo for 560 million euros ($871.9 million) in cash.

* Spanish bank Banco Sabadell said its fully owned BIDSA unit has agreed to acquire 4.9 percent of broadcaster Antena 3 from Grupo Rayet for about 85 million euros ($132.3 million).

* French bank BNP Paribas will buy a stake in Anglo-Dutch private bank Insinger de Beaufort, and merge it with its Dutch and UK operations, creating a 10-billion-euro ($15.6 billion) asset manager.

* German investment group Arques Industries has agreed to buy an 80.2 percent stake in Siemens‘ cordless phone unit SHC, closing the chapter on Siemens’ telecoms business.

* Germany’s BMW agreed to sell 72.9 percent of its IT consultancy Cirquent to NTT Data of Japan for an undisclosed price, the luxury carmaker said.