Reed close to selling Harcourt: sources
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Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier   is close to a deal to sell its U.S. education arm  Harcourt to rival Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep for about $4  billion, people familiar with the situation said on Monday.
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Source says travel and real estate giant is close to reaching agreement to acquire travel Web site. PHILADELPHIA  - Travel and real estate company Cendant Corp.
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Nonbinding offers for the generics business of Merck KGaA , worth at least 4 billion euros ($5.3 billion), are due on Monday, a source close to the sale process told Reuters, confirming a newspaper report.
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Johnson &amp; Johnson (nyse: JNJ - news - people ) is said to be in advanced talks to buy medical device maker Guidant (nyse: GDT - news - people ) for more than $24 billion.
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Business & money: Â· Lender tells shareholders that dividend is on hold  Â· Group of hedge funds is rumoured to be in talks
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The company may be hinting at going public.
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Carlyle Group, a District-based private-equity firm, is in the early stages of discussions to purchase Virgin Media, according to a source familiar with the talks.
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Tishman Speyer Properties and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.  are close to a deal to acquire real estate investment trust Archstone-Smith Trust , according to the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.
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MEDIA giant News Corp and its secondbiggest shareholder, Liberty Media, are reportedly close to a share swap deal that would shore up Rupert Murdoch's control of his company.
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The financial giant is in talks to sell a stake to a Chinese bank and other investors, people briefed on the plan said.
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(InfoWorld) - Despite financial and accounting problems at Dell Inc., Novell Inc. and Yahoo Inc., underlying faith in the software sector and a solid first-day performance on Riverbed Technology Inc.'s initial public offering indicate that the end of the year may yet reward IT investors. The early part of the third quarter proved worrisome for technology investors, as high hopes in the beginning of the year gave way to softer than expected sales and a price war for PC makers. But as the fourth quarter approaches, several brokerages have raised their forecasts for the tech sector as a whole. The lower cost of hardware is expected to spark a spending spree by both consumers and corporate buyers by the end of the year. Analysts also see pent-up demand for software. Signs of hope started appearing in August, when for example Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. released a survey showing that 60 percent of chief information officers polled anticipated increasing software spending in the second half of the year. In addition, Lehman Brothers Inc. and Credit Suisse First Boston have recently recommended that investors take a closer look and invest in technology stocks, reasoning that declines earlier in the year have made some companies a bargain. Stoked by recommendations, the Nasdaq exchange started taking off in August after sinking to a yearly low in July. Good news continued this week, as the debut of Riverbed, a maker of WAN (wide area network) optimization technology, shone on the Nasdaq. Riverbed's (RVBD) initial public offering of 8.7 million shares priced at US$9.75 a share, above the target of $7 to $8.50 a share, and closed at $15.30 Thursday, showing confidence in the network optimization trend. On TuesdayÂ Oracle Corp. reported better-than-expected earnings. Excluding one-time charges for acquisitions, Oracle's earnings per share grew 24 percent to $0.18, better than the $0.16 consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Several analysts said that Oracle's results, after a similar strong report from Adobe Systems Inc. last week, bode well for the upcoming quarter. Specifically, Oracle's strong sales for new applications and services indicate that businesses are in the mood to buy. Citigroup upgraded Oracle to "buy" from "hold," and UBS Warburg and Deutsche Bank raised their price targets. Some bad news midweek put at least a temporary halt to the Nasdaq rise. Yahoo (YHOO) shares plunged $3.25, to close at $25.75 Tuesday after it warned that slowing growth from automotive and financial services advertisers would affect revenue. The warning pushed down sales of other Internet companies as well. News that both Dell andÂ Novell face delisting from the Nasdaq also helped depress the market Thursday. Due to accounting probes, both companies delayed financial reports, which triggered delisting notices. Hewlett-Packard Co. shares, which up until this week seemed impervious to the company's growing spy scandal, finally took a hit Thursday after revelations that Chief Executive Office Mark Hurd may have known about possible illegal investigative techniques as they were being planned. HP shares (HPQ) closed at $34.87, down by $1.91 Thursday. On balance, the bad news seems company-specific, while the solid software results and the excitement sparked by Riverbed appears to speak more to underlying trends. For the hoped-for fourth quarter tech rally to really happen though, investors need to see some strong quarterly reports next month. Â
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Carlyle Group , a U.S.  private equity firm, is considering a stock market listing  similar to last week&#39;s initial public offering by rival  Blackstone , Dow Jones Newswires reported on Wednesday.
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The newspaper publisher Pulitzer is considering whether to sell, which could attract bids of up to $1.5 billion, bankers close to the negotiations said over the weekend.
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News Corp.  is willing to go further than it has before in acceding to tighter safeguards of editorial independence as a condition of buying Dow Jones & Co. Inc. , The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing sources close to News Corp.
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ST. LOUIS The newspaper publisher Pulitzer Inc. has said that company officials are considering a possible sale of the firm to improve shareholder value.
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Michael Liedtke at the AP reports that Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt plan to sell some shares of GOOG. The co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, each plan to sell as many as 7.2 million
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A Qatari investment fund, the Delta Fund, said it was talking with J Sainsbury, the British supermarket operator, about a takeover, the second bid this year for Sainsbury. Delta, which already holds a 25 percent stake in the grocer, said it was in preliminary talks to buy the rest. Sainsbury confirmed it had received an offer, but neither side disclosed a price. Earlier this year the company fended off a Â£10.1 billion ($20.6 billion) bid from a group of buyout funds.