Business news for Mon, 31 Dec 2007 & with word bid. 11 news.

As 2007 draws to a close, we bid adieu to a volatile year in the stock market, although one that is going to end with an overall gain. The average diversified stock fund this year will post about a 7% return, nothing to write home about given the market's historical rise of more than 10% per year, but nothing to sneeze at either given we had a virtual meltdown in some sectors of the financial world in the middle of the year.

Shares in Alliance & Leicester soared 57p to 705p today after reports that takeover talks started by Spain's Banco Santander last month are 'not dead'

Shares in Alliance & Leicester bank leapt almost 9% after reports that the mortgage lender had held talks with Spain's Banco Santander, the owner of Abbey.

Cyprus and Malta begin the final countdown to bid farewell to their national currencies ahead of their entry into the euro zone.

About $40bn in value could be wiped from Rio Tinto's market value if it abandons BHP's proposed merger bid, UK newspaper Sunday Times has reported.

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The Financial Services Authority is probing a jump in the share price of U.K. waste services group Biffa ahead of an announcement in November that it had received a 1.2 billion pound ($2.4 billion) takeover bid, according to a report in the Times (of London) newspaper. The report said the FSA has written to various parties involved in the talks to ask what they knew about any possible bid before buyout groups HgCapital and Montagu Private Equity revealed their offer. The inquiry is a part of a continuing focus at the regulator on insider trading ahead of major announcements, the newspaper added.

State Grid Corp. of China, which won a bid to run the Philippines' electricity network, expects to take about six months to secure approval to operate in the Southeastern Asian country.

Whether Interstate Bakeries Corp. awakens from its three-year bankruptcy slumber in 2008 is anyone's guess.

The airports operator has invited unions to last-ditch talks in the hope of avoiding a 24-hour walkout that threatens to shut down Britain's biggest airports

The Financial Services Authority is investigating a jump in the share price of Biffa, the waste services group, that occurred before an announcement that two private equity firms had made a £1.2 billion bid for the company.

At the Copenhagen fur auction three weeks ago, Danish was hardly spoken. While the auctions are conducted in English, the dominant languages among the 300 or so fur traders, brokers and manufacturers assembled to bid for mink pelts, sable and chinchilla are Mandarin and Russian.