Merger

The merger-unmerger battle continues! The front-line troops get slaughtered, as usual, while the Lady Generals seem to dine on "peasant under glass" (taxpayers and the mentally ill) free from blame. The latest in a long line of fabrications appeared in The Times article "Behavioral Health Funds Drained Off for Hospital," March 14. For the busy taxpayer, I offer this list to save time: Supervisors Susan Lacey and Kathy Long sit on the various boards that advise this problem-plagued area.

CVS Caremark Corp. is being investigated by a multi-state task force looking into the consequences of the company's 2007 purchase of Caremark Rx Inc., Florida's attorney general's office said Wednesday. Florida is conducting a review of the merger that created the largest U.S. supplier of prescription drugs, the state attorney general's office said. Florida is working with other states, the office said. The Caremark unit provides pharmacy-benefits management to employers and accounted for about half of the company's 2009 sales of $98.7 billion.

After months of brushing aside talks of a merger, the ailing parent company of American Airlines is now willing to consider joining forces with another airline. In a letter to employees of AMR, Chief Executive Thomas W. Horton said Tuesday that American Airlines is now in a strong financial position and "it now makes sense to carefully evaluate a range of strategic options, including potential mergers. " Since Fort Worth-based AMR filed for bankruptcy in November, the company has rejected calls to join the airline merger trend of the last few years.

Ed Asner and Valerie Harper are teaming up on a new project: an attempt to take down the proposed merger of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Asner and Harper, who starred in the 1970s "Mary Tyler Moore" TV series, have joined other high-profile actors including Ed Harris and Martin Sheen in filing a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday seeking an injunction to stop SAG from holding a vote on a proposed merger with AFTRA.

A long-anticipated merger of American Airlines and US Airways that would create the nation's largest carrier may be announced as early as this week, sources say. The union of Fort Worth-based American and Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways would create a carrier with as many as 120,000 employees and a fleet of nearly 1,000 planes. The boards of the two airlines are expected to meet in the next few days to vote on the proposed merger, sources have told Los Angeles Times and other news outlets.

When members of Hollywood's two biggest actors unions gathered at the National Labor College in Maryland last summer, it was hardly a love fest. Representatives of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists were meeting to talk about merging their unions. But there was plenty of apprehension on both sides, given the years of turf wars and personality clashes that had caused a bitter fight between the unions in 2008. Needing a mediator to help build trust and facilitate the delicate negotiations to combine two very different unions, SAG and AFTRA turned to Susan Schurman, a onetime bus driver and union leader turned academic who was the founding president of the AFL-CIO-sponsored National Labor College and was adept at training union officials.

The $3-billion merger of Occidental Petroleum and the MidCon Corp. will be allowed to proceed under a consent agreement approved Friday, the Federal Trade Commission announced.

Question: Now that Stanley Black & Decker Inc.'s merger has taken effect, will my shares keep going up or should I be concerned? Answer: Stanley Black & Decker, the world's largest toolmaker, faces the challenge of continued weakness in construction activity and auto sales. But it boasts two of its industry's top brand names, with a broad and hard-to-match product line of carpenter, mechanic, pneumatic, power and hydraulic tools. The $4.5-billion acquisition of Black & Decker Corp.

The Justice Department said the Transportation Department should consider arguments that might be raised in opposition to a proposed merger of Muse Air and Southwest Airlines. But in a position paper made public, the department's antitrust division also said it did not believe that formal public hearings were required. Muse and Southwest have asked the government to exempt their proposed merger from the public hearing requirement of the Federal Aviation Act.

Merger, merger, merger . . . there is an election coming and that's all it's really about. Will Supervisor Kathy Long and associates convince the public that there is no problem? She is making campaign statements like "I will make sure that expenses do not overrun revenues." What about the merger of mental health and social services? Did that one slip by her or is it true that no one told her? She pushed it and voted for it but it's everyone else's fault. There is now a great deal of election spin about how everything is OK. Well, it is not OK. There was one outsider who spotted the problems immediately.