Berkshire to buy ING unit for $441 million
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NEW YORK/AMSTERDAM  - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, in its second acquisition this week, agreed to buy the NRG NV reinsurance unit of ING Group NV  for about 300 million euros ($441 million).
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China agreed to pump $5 billion into Morgan Stanley  as the U.S. investment bank reported a stunning fourth-quarter loss fueled by a bigger-than-expected $9.4 billion of write-downs in mortgages and other assets.
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The Manulife Financial Corporation, a Canadian life insurance company, said it would buy the Berkshire-TWC Financial Groupâs mutual fund and securities dealerships to bolster its Canadian wealth management business. Manulife said the deal would double its number of Canadian wealth management advisers and triple its assets under administration in that business. The deal is part of a plan by Manulife of Toronto to expand its mutual funds unit. The takeover creates a sales force of 1,500 independent advisers and a business with about 19 billion Canadian dollars ($17.7 billion) in assets under administration. The price was not disclosed.
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BlackRock Inc., the largest publicly traded US mutual-fund company, agreed to buy the investment unit of Quellos Group LLC for as much as $1.7 billion, more than doubling its hedge-fund assets.
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Bank of America Corp said on Friday it agreed to acquire battered mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp in a $4 billion transaction that could help avert one of the biggest collapses from the U.S. housing crisis.
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Warren Buffett's investment company announced Tuesday it will pay $4.5 billion for 60 percent of Marmon Holdings Inc., a private company of more than 125 manufacturing and service businesses
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Morgan Stanley's  real estate unit said on Thursday it would buy Australia's Investa Properties Ltd.  for A$4.7 billion (US$3.9 billion), the latest in a string of property takeovers by the U.S. investment bank.
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IPE.com 22/Nov/04: GLOBAL - ING Group is to sell Baring Asset Managementâs investment management activities to MassMutual, while Northern Trust will buy the unitâs fund administration arm.
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Blackstone Group said it would buy GSO Capital Partners, a fund manager focused on leveraged finance, for as much as $930 million in cash and Blackstone units.
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Bank of New York Co. said Tuesday that its BNY Brokerage Inc. unit has agreed to acquire the execution and commission management business of investment management firm Wilshire Associates for an undisclosed amount.
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Warren Buffett's holding company Berkshire Hathaway Inc  bought 1 million shares of insurer UnitedHealth Group  in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to a regulatory filing.
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(InfoWorld) - Banking and insurance conglomerate ING Group has finalized contracts worth â¬750 millionÂ ($994 million) with a consortium of companies to provide workspace services for its 53,000 employees in Europe. The contracts with Royal KPN, Getronics, Atos Origin, and AccentureÂ are each for seven years and cover the installation, maintenance, and support of desktop PCs, laptops, printers and telephones, the companies said Thursday. It's the biggest of three outsourcing deals that ING has finalized recently, worth a combined total of â¬1.3 billion. They are part of a cost-cutting plan announced last November that is designed to save the company â¬460 million per year, including â¬230 million from operations and IT. ABN AMRO Bank made a similar moveÂ last year, announcing a plan to outsource its IT operations worldwide in a series of deals worth â¬1.8 billion over five years. The bulk of that contract went to IBM. KPN took the biggest slice of the latest ING contract. It was awarded â¬269 million to provide fixed and mobile communications, call center, LAN (local area networking) and conferencing services for staff in the Netherlands and Belgium. Atos Origin was awarded â¬216 million to design and manage ING's back-end office automation, including e-mail and the active directory, and provide related support for end users. Getronics was awarded â¬213 million for help desk and on-site support for end users, as well as hardware purchasing and asset management. Accenture was awarded â¬52 million to be the "integrator," coordinating services and managing the supplier contracts. When ING announced an initial agreement with the four companies in July it said the contracts would run for five years and be worth about â¬800 million. It estimated that 550 full-time employees would be transferred to the contractors. That number will now be 430, it said Thursday. Of the earlier outsourcing contracts, on Nov. 6 ING finalized a six-year, â¬200 million deal with LogicaCMG for application management, IT maintenance and testing. And on Dec. 6 it signed a seven-year, â¬350 million contract with the U.K.'s Astron to process its banking and insurance documents.
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Australian property group Investa agrees to be bought by US investment giant Morgan Stanley for $3.9bn.
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An investment group is expected to announce Monday that it has struck a deal to buy British water utility AWG PLC  for about $4.12 billion, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Sunday.
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Bank of New York Co. Inc.  on Monday announced plans to buy Mellon Financial Corp.  for about $16.5 billion, creating a powerhouse in securities servicing and asset management.
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Bank of New York Co.  said on Monday it will buy Mellon Financial Corp.  for $16.5 billion, combining two storied names in American finance to create a powerhouse in custody services for institutional investors and one of the biggest asset managers.
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Berkshire Hathaway said Tuesday that it would pay $4.5 billion for a controlling stake in Marmon Holdings, an industrial conglomerate owned by the Pritzkers.