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The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) has reported earnings this morning, and the initial response is lower. The private equity giant posted a GAAP net loss of $246.7 million after items, and its "economic net income" was also a loss at -$93.6 million.

The company said that its total net reportable segment revenues were $32.3 million, driven down by declines in all business segments from $1.23 billion in 2007. Its GAAP revenues were $68.5 million.

Corporate Private Equity had negative first quarter revenues; Real Estate revenues down 94%; Marketable Alternative Asset Management down 81%; Financial Advisory Revenues decreased 24%

You can look through the entire release, but as the company noted, most business segments were indeed lower.

Interestingly enough, the company now has $113.53 billion in assets under management. It has also decided to make a dividend payment of $0.30.

Shares of Blackstone are down about 4% at $18.70 in pre-market trading.

Usana Health Sciences (NASDAQ: USNA) closed yesterday at $20.83. This morning, Gull Holdings announced its intention to make an offer to USNA shareholders to acquire all of the outstanding shares of USNA for $26 cash.

USNA is a developer & manufacturer of nutritional and personal care products. The stock is up 22% today on the acquisition news.

M&A Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Some companies get it, some don't. Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC) has been in the camp of companies that don't get it. That may have finally changed today.

The company appears to have finally capitulated and realized its days under its own efforts may be limited. There are two separate announcements this morning, but in reality it is all part of the same issue.

This will allow the company to deal with the activist pressure, and may ultimately lead to the company either being run by a better team or become a subsidiary of another company. The company just issued a release that it has reached an agreement with Wattles Capital Management.

Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE: BBI) and Carl Icahn may finally get their way.

Keep reading the full story at 247WallSt.com.

Jon Ogg is also a producer and editor of the "10 Stocks Under $10" weekly newsletter for 247WallSt.com.

According to a report from the Ernst & Young's quarterly US IPO Pipeline Report, IPO activity is flattening as companies are waiting and watching to market to make their move. While that observation is obvious as a heart attack, there are some rather good details that may lead to help determine good IPO's versus bad IPO's in that report.

In the first quarter of 2008, 90 IPOs sat in the pipeline, the same amount as the last quarter of 2007. New registration was stable across the quarters, but the slide is still downward sequentially. In January there were 10 while February and March saw only 6 and 7, respectively. While the amount the registrations represent grew this quarter compared to last, $16.8 billion up to $17.3 billion, the numbers slowed toward the end of the quarter. It seems pre-IPO companies are holding tight and watching the market.

As expected, first quarter 2008 weakened compared to the first quarter in 2007. In the first quarter of 2007, 103 deals waited in the pipeline compared to 90 in 2008. In 2007, the registrants represented $22.8 billion compared to $17.3 billion in 2007. The average deal size also dropped, down to $192 million from $221 million. The largest deal in 2007, The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) reached $4.0 billion while in first quarter 2008, the largest was American Water Works at $1.6 billion. Visa Inc. (NYSE:V) was left off because of an end of quarter and for size issues as 'one of a kind.' Companies are also sitting in the pipeline much longer, 163 days on average compared to 113 in 2007.

Technology takes up the bulk of the pipeline with 26 registrants and $3.3 billion in dollar amount, up from $2.8 in fourth quarter 2007. Technology attracts foreign issuers with four out of five foreign issuers in the technology sector. While technology went up first quarter 2008, oil and gas dropped 60% from $5.3 billion fourth quarter 2007 to $1.9 billion. Biotech accounts for a solid 12 registrants and pharmaceuticals tally 11. California leads on a state-to-state basis, filing 16.7% of the total filings at 15. Texas and New York followed with 11 and 8, respectively.

Also according to the report... Patience and confidence are likely to ebb by June, but if you're a good company with solid business plans, practices and proven results, opportunities still await you in the markets.

The stock of Wendy's International Inc. (NYSE: WEN) was looking pretty poor yesterday morning. The proposed buyout from Triarc Companies Inc. (NYSE: TRY), the investment arm of billionaire Norman Peltz, at the time valued Wendy's at a mere $26.775 a share in a deal that would marry the Arby's and Wendy's brands. Shares even traded down under $25 because of the discounting.

But today's action -- the stock is up over $27.50, a 4% gain -- is looking like a story of "Good News, Bad News, Good News" for investors. This was a huge score for Mr. Peltz and Triarc. The bad news is that Wendy's board of directors folded like the proverbial cheap suit, particularly for shareholders who have been buried since $30 to $40. But the other good news is that if you believe in Nelson Peltz & Friends, you are getting this as an all stock exchange and therefore you are getting to participate in the upside if they get this ship turned around.

I really expected the board of directors to hold out for $30 (you can read the full op-ed piece from right when the deal was announced). If Peltz would have gotten the Trian Acquisition I Corp. (AMEX: TUX) special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) involved, that $30 level could have probably been reached.

One thing that may also be helping shares today is a Goldman Sachs' analyst upgrade, although that was from a "Sell" to a "Neutral" so it shouldn't be anything to get excited about.

Shares of Wendy's are now up 4% at $27.50 and Triarc Companies Inc. (NYSE: TRY) are at $6.66, a nearly 3% gain from yesterday's close. At $6.66 and based on a 4.25 share conversion offer, that would value Wendy's at $28.305 as an end-game pricing. Wall Street is voting positively for Triarc so far, particularly as its shares had been under-performing by so much.

Jon Ogg is an editor and producer of the "Special Situation Investing" newsletter for 247WallSt.com.

The Blackstone Group, LP (NYSE: BX) has another Alliance Data Systems Corp. (NYSE: ADS) law-suit on its hands. According to the Wall Street Journal, this time the credit-card processor has accused Blackstone of breaking their agreement to buy the company for $6.4 billion and demands $170 million as a breakup fee.

This is the second time Alliance has sued Blackstone over the proposed merger. In January, they withdrew a law suit that attempted to force the completion of the merger after Blackstone assured them the deal would go through. Apparently and no one can blame them, they backed out again, prompting the latest law suit.

Blackstone said the pull out is due to a $400 million backstop requirement imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to support OCC regulated Alliance. Alliance alleges Blackstone failed to use "its best efforts" to earn OCC approval and that Alliance took many steps to solve the problem.

Blackstone maintains they did not breach any conditions outlined in the merger agreement and the accusations will be strongly contested. Alliance shares are down over 2% today to $51.55 on a 52-week range of $39.54 to $80.79. The deal valued Alliance shares at $81.75. Blackstone shares are also down by 2% to $18.50 on a 52-week range of $13.40 to $38.00.

Wendy's International Inc. (NYSE: WEN) looks like it is about to have activists coming right up under its floors. Trian, Triarc Companies (NYSE: TRY), Nelson Peltz, Peter May, and others have all sent a letter according to an SEC Filing.

The activist group saw two separate proposals rejected within 24-hours, and it looks like the group is going to go after shareholders directly to garner up support. Wendy's is set to report earnings on April 25, and the activists have essentially said "don't do anything before that date."

What is interesting about this activist situation is that the valuations in the past were ugly and no one would have been able to "make shinola out of you know what" with where the stock was trading. It almost had a phantom premium associated with it merely because of activists and merely because it was "troubled" and in need of being fixed. But a serious pullback in a stock changes things.

So far, the board has been able to rebuff all outside efforts. There are many provisions the company has to defend itself, but things might be heating up quite a bit here.

Continue reading more detailed analysis at 247WallSt.com.

LifeCell (NASDAQ: LIFC) is being acquired by Kinetic Concepts (NYSE: KCI) for $51.00 per share. This is nearly an $8.00 premium, or about 18%, to Friday's closing price of $43.15.

The companies have signed a definitive all-cash agreement for $1.7 billion. This 18% premium also represents a 26% premium over the 90-day volume weighted average trading price. Both companies' board of directors have unanimously approved the transaction.

KCI aims to leverage adjacent technologies and global infrastructure to drive significant revenue synergies, and expects a reduced cost structure as a result of this buyout. The transaction is expected to be initially dilutive to cash earnings per share this year, and becomes accretive to cash earnings per share during 2009. The company calls it significantly accretive in 2010 and beyond.

LifeCell's products are used in surgical soft tissue repair and Kinetic Concepts is a more diversified wound care and therapeutics company.

Watch for more hedge fund closings. They are coming. According to the FT, "Hedge funds are having their worst start to the year on record after March turned into one of the ugliest months for popular strategies and several funds imploded."

The news is bad for the hedge fund managers, but even worse for banks and brokerages that may have loaned them money. Even in a liquidation, these financial firms may not get all of their money back.

Institutional investors, like fund companies, also have money in hedge funds. That could affect the performance they post for their corporate and individual investors. Wealthy individuals often put capital into hedge funds as well.

If the hedge fund debacle gets worse, banks may have to write off the difference between what they loaned and what they got back in liquidation. Just another minefield for money center banks and brokerages.

And the number of trouble spots seems to be growing.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The news that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) would not raise its bid for Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) came as enough of a surprise that it made the front page of some papers. Microsoft managers "argue that Yahoo's recent roadshow failed to dazzle investors and nothing in its presentations will justify a higher price," according to The Wall Street Journal . For good reason. The projections were absurd, especially given current economic conditions.

Microsoft understands full well that it has Yahoo! in a corner and that there is no need to be generous. Yahoo!'s shares traded at $19 just two weeks before the buy-out letter. That means if it walks away, its stock could go down by a third. Its board is not going to stand by and be sued by large institutional shareholders.

Yahoo! has shopped itself aggressively to News Corp (NYSE: NWS) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). Given that Mr. Murdoch is known as a man who never saw a risk he did not like, the fact that he made no bid speaks volumes.

Story continued at 24/7 Wall St.

Gilat Satellite Networks (NASDAQ: GILT) is being acquired for $11.40 per share. The all-cash offer is from an American and Israeli investment group comprised of The Gores Group LLC, Mivtach Shamir Holdings Ltd., companies affiliated with Roy Ben-Yami, Ami Lustig and Eytan Stibbe and DGB Investments.

This transaction is valued at approximately $475 million and this is a definitive merger agreement. This satellite communications operator sells to all forms of customers in remote residential areas for telecom and internet, and sells to government and corporate clients for hybrid IP-based communications in its VSAT network.

Gilat has been a fairly quiet stock that has traded as low as $7.88 and as high as $11.34 over the last year.

After the Captaris Inc. (Nasdaq: CAPA) rejection of a $4.75 per share buyout offer from private-equity firm Vector Capital, the deal has been killed and has been responded to in a formal letter. This merger was noted as having represented a 36% premium.

Vector Capital sent a letter to the Captaris Board of Directors emphasizing their disappointment and surprise at the rejection despite the approval by major shareholders for the transaction. The letter also made very clear that Vector's $4.75 offer and other terms have since expired and should not be considered in Captaris' search for superior offers.

By now we have gotten used to deals blowing up on the larger companies. But the market cap on this deal is only $110 million. The problem is that Captaris has recently traded over $6.00.

The Board of Directors would have potentially faced a shareholder revolt or suit had they approved this deal. That doesn't mean anything is going to be that much better, but sometimes companies can't fold just because they have an offer.

There has been quite a bit of buzz around the trends in special purpose acquisition companies, or SPAC's, of late. In fact, it seems that about two of every three IPO filings that get filed are from SPAC's. These SPAC IPO's offer the public essentially a call option to participate in private equity that will end up being publicly traded stocks. Ultimately, these will become operating companies or within 24 to 30 months investors will receive their cash back minus a few percentage points.

Attention is still being given to the fact that J.W. Childs Acquisition I Corp. was filed to raise $200 million. This was two weeks ago too. Some have asked if J.W. Childs is testing the water here or if this is because they would have trouble raising a private equity fund on their own. If you want a confusing explanation, the answer is "both and neither."

SPAC's are changing as well. In the past, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) has avoided SPAC's and blank check offerings. The reason is that the stigma behind these from the 1990's wasn't a good one. All things change in time. Goldman Sachs just filed for its SPAC initial public offering this week. They also made the terms slightly more tight than most other underwriters.

Opinions on traditional private equity firms going into SPAC launches vary already and they will vary only more in the future. But this strategy makes life easier for the private equity firm. For starters, they don't have to go run through all the hoops associated with raising a private equity fund. They don't have to use their own sales or biz0dev team to go spend the 90 to 180 days or longer due diligence period. This allows them to make the brokerage underwriting firm go do the leg work and allows them to distribute units that are publicly traded to retail and/or institutional clients. It also gives the private equity firm a two-year time frame as breathing room to go pick their deals.

Arguably, it even allows the firms to go through other private equity firms' portfolios to see if there are businesses or units that can be bought that would have otherwise been stuck as a buried entity.

There are many critics of SPAC's and traditional blank check IPO's. But this may be a trend you don't have to like. You just have to accept it for what it is.

It is hard to imagine what Carl Icahn is trying so hard to get control of Motorola (NYSE:MOT), or at least to force the company to "improve shareholder value." The firm is probably no longer worth the sum of its parts.

Earlier today Icahn rejected Motorola's offer of two board seats. According to The Wall Street Journal "Activist investor Carl Icahn, who is waging a proxy fight to win four seats on Motorola's board, said he has rejected a compromise offer from Motorola for two board seats."

The pressure from Icahn pushed MOT shares up to $9.69, well below the $26 where they traded in October 2006.

In the fourth quarter, Motorola's handset division revenue fell 38% to $4.8 billion. The operation lost $388 million compared to an operating profit of $341 million in the same period a year earlier. The company sold 40.9 million handsets in Q4.

Read the rest of the story at 24/7 Wall St.

In what is likely to be a bit of a blockbuster, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox sent a letter to Swiss regulators indicating the Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) did not have to go the way of all flesh. According to The New York Post "the 'fate of Bear Stearns was a lack of confidence, not a lack of capital,' Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote in a five-page letter sent to a Swiss regulator."

That letter will lead angry Bear Stearns sharedholders, who watched the stock fall from over $30 near $2, to question why JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) was able buy the brokerage at a deep discount with help from the Federal Reserve. The missive may encourage Congress and regulators to question whether the takeover of BSC involved foul play.

Read the rest of the story at 247 Wall St.