The Lehman Brothers Back-To-School conference isn’t really about selling to kids, so maybe it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to UST, the tobacco company that owns Joe Camel, when CEO Murray Kessler (pictured left) lit out of the conference to try to close a deal with suitor Altria. The New York Times says the deal is worth $10 billion. Putting the maker of Copenhagen and Skoal firmly in the cheek of the cigarette giant has been talked about long enough to wear a hockey-puck sized circle in the back pocket of any banker’s jeans. (For those of you uninitiated in smokeless tobacco, that’s the mark a tin of tobacco makes in your favorite Levis). Sources said in February that a deal between the two may be only months away, but the two sides were haggling over price. The deal would be Altria’s first major purchase since it split from its international operations, now known as Philip Morris International. The FT’s Alphaville notes that UST owns Ste Michelle Wine Estates, one of the 10 largest producers of premium wines in the US. Another product that would be poorly placed at a back-to-school conference.

Other deals of the day:

* A consortium led by Japanese trading house Marubeni Corp is poised to win an auction to buy Singapore’s Temasek-owned Senoko Power, with an offer of more than S$3.5 billion ($2.4 billion), sources said.

* GDF Suez is in exclusive talks with the Dutch NAM oil venture, owned by Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil, to buy offshore assets worth 1.075 billion euros ($1.54 billion), the French utility said.

* Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery said it will buy operating assets worth 3.02 billion yuan ($442 million) from its parent via a private placement.

* French utility EDF has moved closer to a deal to buy nuclear generator British Energy after fruitful talks with some of the company’s biggest investors, the Financial Times said.

* Dell Inc is trying to sell computer factories around the world in efforts to cut cost and improve profitability, the Wall Street Journal said.

* Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips, said it may buy flash memory maker SanDisk, which is valued at $3.2 billion, in a deal that could reshape a struggling industry.

Fundraising for private equity buyout funds is getting tougher.

Thomson Reuters data for the first half of the year showed 59 buyout funds raised $35 billion, down from 74 funds totaling $62 billion the first half of 2008.

The immediate future looks no easier. Blackstone’s first close on its fund — which Private Equity Intelligence says has a target of $20 billion — was $7 billion, sources previously told Reuters. But it isn’t going so well, according to a Wall Street Journal report that said California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, intends to invest just $250 million into the fund, significantly less than the $1.7 billion it committed to the firm’s prior fund.

Blackstone has one of the biggest brand names in the business and its success in raising this fund will be closely watched for others in the market.

Nobody knows better than South Korea how elusive the floor can be when markets are crying fire-sale. Pushed to the wall during the Asia Crisis a decade ago, the country’s banks had their assets priced in the pennies-on-the-dollar range. Here now, with the shoe squarely on the other foot, is Korea Asset Management, a government debt clearer that says its purchase of illiquid Merrill Lynch debt securities is faltering over price. Local media reported in July that Kamco planned to raise up to 2 trillion won ($1.98 billion) to buy U.S. non-performing loans with Shinhan Bank and Mirae Asset Securities. Kamco had said it was in the process of raising about $1 billion to buy distressed mortgage assets from U.S. banks and expected double-digit returns from its investments. Hardly the kind of buying clout that Merrill faced when it agreed to sell $30.6 billion of collateralized debt obligations to a Lone Star affiliate in July for 22 cents on the dollar. If nothing else, execs at Lehman Brothers will be watching this high-stakes haggling with much nervous interest as they negotiate with another South Korean state-owned institution, Korea Development Bank, over a possible joint investment in the CDO-laden U.S. investment bank.

Other deals of the day:

* Novolipetsk Steel, the Russian steel maker owned by billionaire Vladimir Lisin, has agreed to pay $400 million in cash to acquire U.S. hot-rolled steel maker Beta Steel and expand its presence in North America.

* InBev is to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Sept. 29 to vote on its planned $52 billion takeover of Anheuser Busch and related matters.

* Private equity firm Advent International has taken a majority stake in Swiss duty-free retailer Dufry by means of a share swap that combines it with the U.S. firm’s airport retailer Hudson. Dufry, which already held an 11.2 percent stake in Hudson that it bought in April, said it was swapping Hudson’s common stock for Dufry equity and refinancing its approximately $390 million in debt. The total value of Hudson’s equity is $446 million.

Coke pulled off the single largest takeover in Chinese history overnight, offering to buy juice maker Huiyuan for three times what the company was worth. Braving a notoriously difficult foreign M&A environment, where the state dominates the corporate sector and pumps out reams of regulatory red tape and where nationalistic pride often triggers protests when foreign firms gain influence over domestic firms. Since capitalism is good these days, that premium should go a long way toward suppressing any nationalistic distaste with the deal. Interesting to note that Chinese inbound corporate deals so far are up 30 percent from a year ago, to $15.3 billion.

Hedge fund manager Ospraie Management will close its flagship fund after it plunged 27 percent in August on losses in energy, mining and natural resources equity holdings, in one of the biggest ever closures of a commodities-focused hedge fund. The closure of the fund, announced by the firm’s founder Dwight Anderson in a letter to investors on Tuesday, could be more bad news for Lehman Brothers, which took a 20 percent stake in the hedge fund manager in 2005. One expert said the closure of the fund, which at the time of the letter’s writing had lost 38.59 percent this year, may also have played a role in bringing down U.S. stocks yesterday, which fell after initially climbing more than 1 percent. Lehman shares were down more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Other deals of the day:

* South Korea’s military savings fund would consider joining Korea Development Bank in a bid for Lehman Brothers if KDB made such an offer, as now appears a good time for U.S. investments, the fund’s chairman said.

* Friends Provident, Britain’s smallest blue-chip life insurer, will not sell its Lombard and F&C units if it cannot get a good price, recently appointed chief executive Trevor Matthews said.

* Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will likely fold one of its small consumer finance units into affiliate Acom, a newspaper said, the latest move by a Japanese bank to strengthen its position in the struggling consumer lending market. Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest bank, will seek to merge unlisted DC Cash One with Acom, the Nikkei newspaper said.

* Irish supermarket group Superquinn has received six expressions of interest from potential bidders, including Britain’s Asda and J Sainsbury, the Irish Times newspaper said.

This won’t be a revelation to private equity bankers — but August was officially quiet for deals.

The summer month typically marks a dearth of transactions as bankers head out to the beach, but last month was exceptionally slow.

The dollar value of deals involving private equity sank to the lowest for four years, $21.7 billion globally on 206 deals, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Two years ago, private equity deals during the August heat — which already post-dated the initial popping of the credit bubble — amounted to $47 billion.

With just months to go before bonuses are calculated, the pressure’s surely on to make up some of the dealflow before year end.

Fundraising for private equity buyout funds is getting tougher.

Thomson Reuters data for the first half of the year showed 59 buyout funds raised $35 billion, down from 74 funds totaling $62 billion the first half of 2008.

The immediate future looks no easier. Blackstone’s first close on its fund — which Private Equity Intelligence says has a target of $20 billion — was $7 billion, sources previously told Reuters. But it isn’t going so well, according to a Wall Street Journal report that said California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, intends to invest just $250 million into the fund, significantly less than the $1.7 billion it committed to the firm’s prior fund.

Blackstone has one of the biggest brand names in the business and its success in raising this fund will be closely watched for others in the market.

Nobody knows better than South Korea how elusive the floor can be when markets are crying fire-sale. Pushed to the wall during the Asia Crisis a decade ago, the country’s banks had their assets priced in the pennies-on-the-dollar range. Here now, with the shoe squarely on the other foot, is Korea Asset Management, a government debt clearer that says its purchase of illiquid Merrill Lynch debt securities is faltering over price. Local media reported in July that Kamco planned to raise up to 2 trillion won ($1.98 billion) to buy U.S. non-performing loans with Shinhan Bank and Mirae Asset Securities. Kamco had said it was in the process of raising about $1 billion to buy distressed mortgage assets from U.S. banks and expected double-digit returns from its investments. Hardly the kind of buying clout that Merrill faced when it agreed to sell $30.6 billion of collateralized debt obligations to a Lone Star affiliate in July for 22 cents on the dollar. If nothing else, execs at Lehman Brothers will be watching this high-stakes haggling with much nervous interest as they negotiate with another South Korean state-owned institution, Korea Development Bank, over a possible joint investment in the CDO-laden U.S. investment bank.

Other deals of the day:

* Novolipetsk Steel, the Russian steel maker owned by billionaire Vladimir Lisin, has agreed to pay $400 million in cash to acquire U.S. hot-rolled steel maker Beta Steel and expand its presence in North America.

* InBev is to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting on Sept. 29 to vote on its planned $52 billion takeover of Anheuser Busch and related matters.

* Private equity firm Advent International has taken a majority stake in Swiss duty-free retailer Dufry by means of a share swap that combines it with the U.S. firm’s airport retailer Hudson. Dufry, which already held an 11.2 percent stake in Hudson that it bought in April, said it was swapping Hudson’s common stock for Dufry equity and refinancing its approximately $390 million in debt. The total value of Hudson’s equity is $446 million.

Coke pulled off the single largest takeover in Chinese history overnight, offering to buy juice maker Huiyuan for three times what the company was worth. Braving a notoriously difficult foreign M&A environment, where the state dominates the corporate sector and pumps out reams of regulatory red tape and where nationalistic pride often triggers protests when foreign firms gain influence over domestic firms. Since capitalism is good these days, that premium should go a long way toward suppressing any nationalistic distaste with the deal. Interesting to note that Chinese inbound corporate deals so far are up 30 percent from a year ago, to $15.3 billion.

Hedge fund manager Ospraie Management will close its flagship fund after it plunged 27 percent in August on losses in energy, mining and natural resources equity holdings, in one of the biggest ever closures of a commodities-focused hedge fund. The closure of the fund, announced by the firm’s founder Dwight Anderson in a letter to investors on Tuesday, could be more bad news for Lehman Brothers, which took a 20 percent stake in the hedge fund manager in 2005. One expert said the closure of the fund, which at the time of the letter’s writing had lost 38.59 percent this year, may also have played a role in bringing down U.S. stocks yesterday, which fell after initially climbing more than 1 percent. Lehman shares were down more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.

Other deals of the day:

* South Korea’s military savings fund would consider joining Korea Development Bank in a bid for Lehman Brothers if KDB made such an offer, as now appears a good time for U.S. investments, the fund’s chairman said.

* Friends Provident, Britain’s smallest blue-chip life insurer, will not sell its Lombard and F&C units if it cannot get a good price, recently appointed chief executive Trevor Matthews said.

* Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will likely fold one of its small consumer finance units into affiliate Acom, a newspaper said, the latest move by a Japanese bank to strengthen its position in the struggling consumer lending market. Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s largest bank, will seek to merge unlisted DC Cash One with Acom, the Nikkei newspaper said.

* Irish supermarket group Superquinn has received six expressions of interest from potential bidders, including Britain’s Asda and J Sainsbury, the Irish Times newspaper said.