Merger Arbitrage Mondays – August 23, 2010

Merger activity continued to remain high last week with eight new deals announced and three deals closing. However the value of deals driven by Intel’s $7.68 billion bid for McAfee (MFE) was much higher when compared to last week even without including BHP Billiton’s $40 billion hostile bid for Potash Corp of Saskatchewan (POT). As an Intel shareholders I am very disappointed with the company’s decision to purchase McAfee. While security at the silicon level makes sense, spending $7.68 billion from Intel’s $18.3 billion cash war chest towards this goal makes little sense. It would have been much more preferable for Intel to return value to shareholders through share buybacks or raising its dividend.

It was also interesting to see that one of the 11 banks on my watch list of regional banks, First Niagara Financial Group (FNFG), acquired another one from my list New Alliance Bancshares (NAL).

New Deals Announced Last Week:

1. The acquisition of 3PAR (PAR) by Dell (DELL) for $18 per share in cash
2. The acquisition of ICx Technologies (ICXT) by FLIR Systems (FLIR) for $7.55 per share in cash
3. The acquisition of Osteotech (OSTE) by Medtronic (MDT) for $6.50 per share in cash

The deals that closed include,

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