Most reporters covering the M&A space are all too familiar with the Sunday night dealwatch. Many big takeovers are traditionally announced on Sunday night so they can be splashed all over the front page of Monday papers  that are otherwise devoid of major news.

Now, meet the Friday afternoon death watch, which is threatening to ruin the weekends for many U.S. banking executives, their customers, regulators and some reporters.

Banking regulators typically swoop down and take over troubled banks on Fridays, and with the U.S. economy slowing, executives at many more banks may have to make changes to their weekend plans.

Although it is not a policy, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp prefers to take over institutions on a Friday as it gives regulators the time to do the transition before reopening branches the following Monday.

“It gives you the weekend to put new people in place,” says John Douglas, a former FDIC general counsel who is now a partner at the law firm Paul Hastings.

“In an emergency situation they would do it earlier,” Douglas says. “But typically it is a Friday.”

It is a strong preference. Five banks have failed this year, and all of them have been taken out on Fridays.

It might just be a coincidence, but Friday evenings are also typically the time that both companies and politicians typically announce bad news — as it is the day that many newspapers tend to have earlier deadlines and as fewer people tend to read them on a Saturday. 

The latest bank failure — and one of the largest of them all – was just last Friday. Regulators swooped in to seize mortgage lender IndyMac Bancorp after a bank run in which panicked customers withdrew more than $1.3 billion of deposits in 11 business days. By Monday, regulators had reopened the bank’s doors and will run the bank while they look for a buyer.

Analysts decline to speculate about which banks might fail, but several smaller lenders and even larger ones appear to have elevated levels of troubled loans relative to their sizes.

Earlier this month, RBC Capital Markets analyst Gerard Cassidy estimated that more than 300 banks could fail in the next three years, up from his February estimate of no more than 150.

For at least a year or two, TGIF may not be the refrain at many banks.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

We can spend a lot of time analyzing how Yahoo really feels about Carl Icahn and his rival slate. But this, found at the top of Yahoo’s latest proxy filing and its homepage, says it all.

(Photo: Yahoo)

In what looks like the perfect prescription for growth, Teva Pharmaceutical is buying rival generic drugmaker Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. The over $7 billion deal, plus about $1.5 billion in debt, is aimed at expanding Teva’s leadership in the U.S. market and fortifying its presence in Europe. Israel-based Teva, the world’s largest generic drug company, plans to buy New Jersey-based Barr for $66.50 per share in cash and stock. The price represents a 42 percent premium to Barr’s closing price on Wednesday, the companies said. Teva told analysts in February it was seeking to extend its U.S. market share to 30 percent of generic prescriptions by 2012, up from about 20 percent. Barr is about the fifth-largest generic company by U.S. prescriptions.

Freddie Mac may have its own prescription for keeping itself alive. The mortgage giant is considering raising capital by selling as much as $10 billion in new shares to investors, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report comes after the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve announced a plan on Sunday to shore up the balance sheets and borrowing capabilities of Freddie Mac and sister company Fannie Mae. Such a share sale, which has not yet been determined, could forestall a full government rescue, the WSJ said. The main buyers for any new-stock issues are likely to be existing shareholders worldwide, the paper said, citing one person involved in the discussion.

And what better way to the end the week than with the latest installment of the classic soap opera, As My Yahoo Turns. In the latest episode, a person with knowledge of the plans says Yahoo is unlikely to get into a bidding war over AOL with Microsoft Corp because if Microsoft gets in the way, Yahoo could instead renew talks over News Corp’s Web properties. Yahoo, seeking to shape an independent growth strategy after rebuffing Microsoft’s bid to take it over, has kept in contact with News Corp, the source said, but discussions with Time Warner Inc about AOL appeared further along. Did you get all that? News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said just last week that a deal between his company, which owns the popular MySpace online social network, and Yahoo was “very unlikely.” But that was last week. Once again, stay tuned …

More deals of the day:

** Zentiva advised its shareholders to reject a $2.1 billion takeover offer by France’s Sanofi-Aventis, as investors awaited a higher one in the bidding war with a Czech financial fund.

** The private equity arm of AMP Ltd has received several offers for Jeminex Group, a company in its portfolio with an enterprise value of up to A$400 million ($388 million), two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

** Rambler Media, the British-registered owner of Russia’s Rambler Internet portal, said it has agreed to sell the Begun advertising agency to Google Inc for $140 million.

** Spanish construction firm ACS has agreed to sell its 45.3 percent stake in energy utility Union Fenosa to France’s EDF and a deal may be announced on Friday, Spain’s ABC newspaper reported.

A throng of union leaders, New York City council members, and service workers descended on Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ New York headquarters on Thursday,  to pressure Henry Kravis, one of the buyout giant’s founders, to pay more taxes.

The crowd of more than 150, some brandishing placards with slogans such as “No tax breaks for Buyout CEOs” and “Take back the economy”, was made of workers demanding an end to tax provisions that protesters say help private equity bosses pay lower tax rates than a janitor or security guard.

Andrew McDonald, a spokesman for the Service Employee International Union said the activists singled out KKR, rather than other private equity firms because it is the second biggest employer in the U.S. The union says the number of employees in KKR’s portfolio companies is 800,000.

Mike Fishman, President of SEIU’s Local 32BJ, said the tax dollars KKR doesn’t pay “deprives working people of social services.” 

KKR owns businesses including mattress maker Sealy, software firm Sunguard and retailer Toys R Us. 

In a statement, KKR said, “We disagree with the SEIU’s distortion of the facts and their street theater approach.  We work hard to build better companies that benefit multiple stakeholders – including the millions of pension beneficiaries who receive good returns on our investments.”

“We’re calling for a code of conduct for treating workers more fairly,” said McDonald. “We have an economy that’s not working for working people.”

Several New York City political figures were present, including Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and City Council members Eric Gioia and John Liu. Liu says that closing the New York City tax loophole in question, the Unincorporated Business Tax, would generate $100 million for New York City.

The union has plans to expand its advocacy. “Today it starts with taxes, but it will extend to a whole set of other issues,” MacDonald said.

Anheuser-Busch’s “Cuba defense” against a takeover by Belgium-based InBev may have gone flat after the Budweiser folks agreed to be bought out, but don’t expect to see America’s top-selling beers in Havana bars any time soon.  

InBev brews and sells Beck’s, Bucanero, Cristal and Mayabe beers in Cuba through a 50/50 joint venture with the Cuban government. Could Cubans now be one mambo step closer to cracking open a cold Bud on a hot Havana night? 

Not so fast, says Uncle Sam.

According to a U.S. embargo against Cuba “no products, technology, or services may be exported from the United States to Cuba, either directly or through third countries. This prohibition includes dealing in or assisting the sale of goods or commodities to or from Cuba, even if done entirely offshore.” 

Exceptions include things like medicine, food, agricultural products, works of art or publications. 

“There will not be any Bud in Cuba. That’s a business that doesn’t exist now and it will not exist in the future until the regime changes,” said Todd Malan, president and chief executive of the Organization for International Investment, a lobbying group that represents U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies.

But talk to enough people in Cuba and someone will remember when Budweiser was sold there. A waiter at Havana’s landmark Hotel Nacional recently said the last time he saw it was in the early 1990s –  right about the time the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba’s economy, heavily subsidized by Moscow, went south.  

But Corona, whose brewer Grupo Modelo is half-owned by Anheuser, is generally sold in hotels, restaurants and some stores that cater to foreigners.

Average Cubans tend to know Corona’s name and some say they have seen it occassionally, but it is not their everyday choice. That would be one of InBev’s beers.

A can of Cristal or Bucanero at stores costs at least 1 CUC – the Cuban hard currency worth slightly less than a dollar. Given that the average Cuban makes about $18/month, beer is a luxury.

Bottles of Cuban rum — which include Pernod Ricard’s Havana Club — start at around $3 and go up from there. 
     
A DEAL OBSTACLE? 

Before a higher bid lured Anheuser into negotiations, the Budweiser maker sued InBev, saying the maker of Stella Artois and Becks may be lying when it promised to manage the combined company’s North American business from its hometown of St. Louis, since its Cuban business would make that impossible.

But InBev could take a cue from France-based Pernod, which also owns Wild Turkey bourbon, made in the United States. It does not sell Havana Club in the U.S. or Wild Turkey in Cuba. Its business in Cuba is completely separate from the U.S., according to Mark Orr, Pernod Ricard USA’s vice president for North American affairs.

He guessed that if regulators hassled InBev over its Cuban ties, the maker of Stella Artois and Beck’s could save itself by making sure that the Cuban venture was managed separately from anything going on in the U.S.

“I have no personal knowledge about how their business is currently structured, but I think they could do it fairly easily because everybody else has managed to do it in the appropriate way,” Orr said. “They are smart people and I’m certain they’ll do the necessary thing to comply with the law.”

InBev sells less than half a percent of its total beer volume in Cuba, according to a spokeswoman. Therefore, lawyers have said, it’s likely that InBev would swiftly sell it rather than have it impede its $52 billion takeover of Anheuser-Busch.   

And if the Castro dynasty were to end? Expect the “King of Beers” to be paraded through the streets of Havana, Clydesdales and all. 

(Additional reporting by Jeff Franks in Havana) 
     
(Photos: Reuters)