British Petroleum is bidding on a package of Devon Energy assets that the US energy company put up for sale late last year, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The company is looking at Devon’s position offshore Brazil, as well as Gulf of Mexico and Canadian assets, one source said. There could be around six other bidders as well as the British oil major. Read the story here.

And in news reported by other media on Thursday:

Dubai World will present its first concrete proposals to local banks on Thursday on restructuring $22 billion of debt, The National newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources. The state-owned conglomerate has requested meetings with Emirates NBD and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank to present its proposals.

British interdealer broker Tullett Prebon confirmed it was in preliminary talks that might lead to an offer. The stock is up over 24 percent, valuing the company at nearly 830 million pounds ($1.2 billion), so investors see some merit in the idea, but an analyst we spoke to questioned whether the potential buyers talked about in a Daily Mail newspaper report are logical buyers.

One of them is Macquarie Group, Australia’s top investment bank. Oriel Securities analyst Keith Baird said Macquarie’s expansion of global investment banking business show it is more interested in arranging deals than being an agent for them. The other potential buyer noted was Bank of China, the country’s largest foreign exchange lender.

Baird thought the only reason BOC would want to get involved with an interdealer broker would be to use its institutional knowledge to set up a similar operation in the People’s Republic. He thought a more likely candidate would be Tullett’s Chief Executive Terry Smith (looking like a buyer above?) with the backing of a private equity investor. Smith currently owns around 4 percent.