any which way the cookie crumbles

Did you say, bad times for I-bankers? Oh, Really...?

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The smarts don’t buy it. They make money every which way. If they don’t get to do enough deals, they’ll make money undoing it.

"Yahoo shelled out $36 million in the first half of 2008 to the outside advisers that helped the company navigate stormy buyout talks with Microsoft and the ensuing proxy threat from activist investor Carl Icahn.

Yahoo leaned on investment banks Goldman Sachs Group, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Moelis & Co., and law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, after Microsoft made its initial $44.6 billion offer, which was made public in February.

The negotiations collapsed in early May when Yahoo rejected an even richer $47.5 billion offer, but Microsoft came back later that month with an offer to buy Yahoo's search operations a la carte. As that failed, Icahn, who has a long history of challenging corporate boards, threatened to replace all of Yahoo's directors with his own hand-picked slate so he could negotiate a sale.

Yahoo's $36 million tab, disclosed in a regulatory filing, amounts to about 5 percent of the $673 million in profit Yahoo reported in the first six months of the year."

So, now you know the name of the game... it is survival...!!! Fling a deal and see if you can pull it off; and if you can't, make sure that it's botched right ;)

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Market declines; off goes PE deals, but law firms connect….

ICICI Venture and Jaypee Infratech have terminated negotiations for the PE player buying close to 10-15% stake for $800 million in the infrastructure company, which is developing project worth $ 25 billion. Earlier Blackstone backed off from buying 26% stake in Hyderabad-based Ushodaya Enterprises (of Eenadu newspapers and television channels) for $275 million. Similarly, Future group’s PE fund Indivision cancelled its deal to buy 4.9% stake for Rs 250 crore in media house Zee TV’s DTH venture Dish TV following the market meltdown that saw Dish TV share prices sliding far below the deal price.

But as they say, lawyers never lose. Allen and Overy, a leading international law firm and Trilegal, an Indian law firm, confirmed their new arrangement involving client referrals, training, consultation and joint marketing.

Allen and Overy say they belong to a “magic circle” – now what is that? I guess it’s a law firms moniker akin to "Big Four" for accounting firms. At least magic circle is more overt a term – the client will realize he’ll be (financially) done in as if by magic….

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