Duquesne Capital Management, Alpha Natural Resources largest shareholder, has been working to scuttle the company’s takeover of Foundation Coal for the past two weeks. In perhaps its last at shot at swaying shareholders before tomorrow morning’s vote on the deal, Duquesne released its latest reason investors should oppose the deal on Thursday: the payout Alpha Chairman and CEO Michael Quillen will receive if the deal goes through.

Duquesne, which is run by financier Stanley Druckenmiller, has already said it believes the proposed deal will hurt Alpha shareholders financially. It believes the merged company would lower Alpha’s relative exposure to more profitable metallurgical coal and international thermal coal markets.

Now, it raises the issueof the payout and the fact that Quillen , who will be staying on as chairman of the merged company, would be treated as if he had been terminated without cause.

Duquesne says Quillen would receive close to $15 million in shares and cash if the deal were to go through, based on sttock prices at Wednesday’s close. But Alpha says that Duquesne has exaggerated the payout.

“We view the Duquesne statements regarding Mr. Quillen’s compensation as misleading,” an Alpha   spokesman said. “The compensation arrangements are fully disclosed in the proxy on page 78.  Duquesne seems to imply that all compensation is payable upon consummation of the merger.  In fact, as described in the proxy, the vast majority of compensation will be dependent upon Mr. Quillen’s continued employment with the Company and with the Company meeting performance goals over the next three years.??”

We’ll find out tomorrow whether Duquesne has been able to gain any traction with other shareholders.

Duncan Niederauer, the head of New York Stock Exchange operator NYSE Euronext, opened the company’s quarterly earnings conference call with this riddle on Thursday:

“What do Rich Repetto, Carlos Delgado, and Jose Reyes have in common? …They are all on the disabled list as a result of baseball-related injuries.”

“So, Rich, I heard you hurt yourself at Yankee Stadium the other night and I hope you’ve recovered,” the CEO continued. ”I was pleased to hear that while you were crashing into the wall you managed to hold on to the ball and make the catch in spite of being knocked unconscious. Congratulations. Hopefully you’ll be back in the lineup sooner than Delgado and Reyes.”

Repetto, the popular financial analyst at Sandler O’Neill, wasn’t pinch hitting for the New York Mets. Nor the Yankees for that matter. And turns out he didn’t actually crash into a wall. But he was playing shortstop when those attending a corporate event last week decided to play a little pick-up softball game in the outfield, after taking a tour of the new Yankee Stadium.

Corporate types set up a makeshift diamond in the outfield (the sandy infield was off-limits), taking advantage of a Yankees roadtrip.  Repetto, who played ball in high school, says he made a couple of plays earlier in the game. So when a blooper soared just over his head, he backpeddled, dove backward and secured the out — “just before landing straight on my head,” he said afterward.

The stock analyst was unconscious for about 10 seconds, and was very groggy upon recovery, before a paramedic accompanied him to a Bronx hospital. “It’s kind of a joke now, but it wasn’t funny at the time,” Repetto said.

If you needed a sign that banks are becoming more confident on the finance biz, take a look at what analysts are saying about General Electric this morning. The clouds that have hung over the industrial conglomerate’s finance arm through the financial crisis, are starting to break up, say Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. GE’s stock put on 4 percent on the comments before the market opened.

With support seen waning for regulatory reforms that would require such GE to dump its finance arm, Goldman boosted the bank’s rating on the GE stock to a “buy” from “neutral”. Deutsche was also upbeat. Both noted that allowing GE to keep the business would give it more strategic flexibility and Goldman had estimated that a forced break-up could cost GE equity holders $40 billion.

GE Capital is the biggest drag on the company, which is trying to wind the unit back to represent no more than 30 percent of earnings, down from half before the crisis. There is little doubt that government intervention elsewhere has been bitter medicine, even if it was seen as necessary to sustaining the financial system. Signs that politicians are releasing their supportive stranglehold on the sector, such as allowing TARP paybacks, are likely to be pointed to as signs of a broader recovery.

Volkswagen (VOWG.DE) continues to pile cash ahead of the expected Porsche deal, one of the biggest European deals on the horizon. The giant German carmaker’s net cash stood at 12.3 billion euros at the end of June. Meanwhile, two top Porsche executives have left the company, removing further obstacles to a takeover of the firm.

In other M&A related stories reported by Reuters and other media on Thursday:

Britain’s leading institutional investors are considering options to take control of rights issues because they are frustrated by high underwriting fees and deep-discount deals, the Times said, citing one of London’s biggest long-term shareholders.

French drugs group Sanofi-Aventis has agreed to pay $4 billion to Merck for a 50 percent stake in animal health venture Merial. The group has also agreed a possible wider new joint venture that would combine the Merial business with the similar activities of the pending $41 billion merger of Merck and Schering-Plough Corp.

New York-listed Software firm Patni Computer (PTNI.BO) told Reuters in an interview that it will seek acquisitions in Europe and the Asia-Pacific to help lower its dependence on the U.S market. CFO Surjeet Singh said the company will look at targets in the range of $50-$200 million.