VENTURE CAPITAL POST

The chief executive of Commerzbank is predicting a wave of mergers among Germany's cooperative and savings banks. Martin Blessing, who heads Germany's second biggest bank, noted that there were still almost 2,000 banks in Germany, in contrast to about 20 in Spain.

Mergers and acquisition deals announced so far this year have topped $3 trillion, the highest since 2007, helped by mega deals in the healthcare, energy and power sectors.

President and Chief Executive Officer Nobuhiro Torii told Bloomberg in an interview in Tokyo yesterday that Suntory Beverage & Food will not be actively pursuing acquisitions in the next 12 months following its debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this year.

According to Tingyi Holding Corp Chief Financial Officer Frank Lin, his company could form more corporate alliances or strategic purchases next year in mainland China.

With market saturation leading to falling prices which have hurt earnings and prevented telecommunications operators from making investments, TDC Chief Executive Carsten Dilling has joined the call of his rivals for mergers.

Despite investor criticism it received for paying more investment attention on its non-core division, Gazprom announced on Tuesday in a joint statement that it had acquired Profmedia from metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin.

A flush of mergers and acquisitions was expected to come in as early as the end of the year, according to a report from financial news magazine Barron's.

Retail buyouts and mergers lead by foreign exchange market broker FXCM Inc had been seen proliferating in the midst of closures of some of the biggest hedge funds in the US and European Union.

American companies had been seen doing mergers abroad most likely because of the lower taxes available in their new homes.

According to a report from Reuters, bad publicity would cause a great impact on an upcoming deal as stated in the Journal of Financial Economics by Baixiao Liu and John McConnell.

Kloevern AB gained the most after the firm was upgraded in status by Swedbank AB.

Orange SA sees market consolidation as the next wave should Telefonica SA and Royal KPN NV merge.

U.S. Justice Department asked a federal court to set trial date on March 3 to hear arguments on whether it should halt a planned merger between US Airways and American Airlines.

A new giant was created through the merger of Publicis and Omnicom which overshadowed WPP's dominance of more than four years in the communications market.

ECWA mergers to pay debt caused WNY water bills increase.