Exelon Corp has offered to purchase all outstanding common stock in NRG Energy Inc in an all-stock deal worth around $6.2 billion.

In a press release Exelon announced on Monday that it is offering a fixed exchange ratio of 0.485 Exelon shares for every NRG share. This represents a value of $26.43 for each NRG common share based on Exelon’s closing price of $54.50 on October 17. The press release also added that Exelon’s offer marked a 37% premium on the October 17 closing value of NRG shares.

Exelon Corp is based on Chicago is one of the biggest electric utilities of the country with around $19 billion in annual revenues. The company did not specify whether its offer was friendly or hostile but published the contents of the letter from Exelon CEO to top NRG executives detailing the advantages of a tie-up.

The merger between NRG and Exelon, if realised, would create the largest power company in the United States by various measures. Exelon CEO John Rowe said in a press release that a NRG-Exelon combination would result in a total enterprise value of around $60 billion and would have a generating capacity of 47000 megawatts. The new company formed after the merger would thus have enough electricity to serve nearly 45 million homes in the US.

Group Caisse d’Epargne, a major French banking group, announced yesterday that it was ousting its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer after suffering trading losses worth 600 million euro or $807 million.

The third-largest consumer banking network in France, decided to undertake changes at the highest managerial levels after the six-member proprietary trading team at Caisse d’Epargne incurred the loss on equity derivatives by exceeding the authorised limit on the size and risk. This latest instance of turmoil in the French banking system has been termed by President Nicolas Sarkozy as revealing “an absence of responsibility” at the bank. It comes nine months after Societe Generale SA incurred losses amounting to 4.9 billion euro from unauthorized bets by trader Jerome Kerviel and has opened a whole gamut of questions on various aspects of risk management.

The supervisory board of Caisse d’Epargne has decided to replace chairman Charles Milhaud with Bernard Comolet while Alaire Lemaire will be the new CEO, thus replacing Nicolas Merindal. The finance minister of France, Christine Lagarde has ordered an inquiry into the trading loss at Caisse d’Epargne which has around 4770 branches as well as 51200 employees according to the latest information available on its website.

OPEC, the largest group of oil supplying countries in the world, seems to be moving towards an output cut for the first time in almost two years as the ongoing global finance crisis sends crude prices plunging to $50 a barrel.

Options contracts to sell oil at $50 by December this year, increased by 28 times at the New York Mercantile Exchange. Last week crude prices fell to the lowest in 14 months and by more than 50% since July 14 when it had touched the record high of $147. in such a scenario it is possible, say analysts from Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch & Co., that prices may plunge by another 44% should the world economy continue to head towards a recession.

The Organization of Petroleum Countries supply more than 40% of the world’s demand for oil. It plans to meet in Vienna on October 24, three weeks ahead of schedule. Recession-like conditions all over the globe has resulted in the weakest demand for oil since 1993 when new oil fields entered trade from Angola to New Mexico. OPEC president has revealed that considering the falling demand and crude prices, members of the consortium may decide to cut down output by as much as 2 million barrels a day.

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced on Monday, a 69% decline in third quarter profits as higher taxes and expenses to buy a stake in eyecare specialist Alcon offset increased sales of its cancer and hear drugs.

Novartis said that its net income for the third quarter has fallen to $2.1 billion from $6.9 billion in the same quarter last year. The 2007 third quarter profit had included earnings of $5.29 billion from the sale of its medical nutrition and Gerber division to Nestle. Novartis had also paid a lower tax rate of 2.3% in the same period a year ago which has jumped back to 14% this year. Another major expense in the third quarter this year which has pushed up Novartis’ financing costs is a $10.4 billion purchase of 25% stake in the eyecare specialist Alcon from Nestle.

However Novartis continued to perform in line with its sales forecasts which rose by 12% in the third quarter to $10.75 billion. The increase in sales was primarily driven by the good performance of its cancer and heart drugs in the market. While cancer drugs like Gleevec and Zometa registered 15% and 9% rise in sales respectively, cardiac drug sales led by Diovan increased by 20% and brought in$1.7 billion for Novartis.

Telefon AB L.M Ericsson announced on Monday that third quarter profits were down by 28% due to higher restructuring costs but sales were up and that it had not suffered any effects of the global financial meltdown.

Stockholm-based Ericsson is the largest mobile network company in the world. On Monday, it said that net profit of the company in the period ending September 30 was down to SEK 2.84 billion or $383.5 million from SEK 3.97 billion in the same quarter a year ago. This decline in profits was attributed to a SEK2 billion restructuring charge that Ericsson incurred in the third quarter this year.

However overall sales of the quarter ending September 30 rose by 13% to SEK 49.2 billion from SEK 43.2 billion with strong growth in almost all markets other than Western Europe. Sales at key network units performed better than forecasts and increased by 16% to SEK 33 billion even as the unit posted an operating margin of 11% excluding restructuring costs.

Ericsson officials claimed that as yet the global financial crisis had not dented the company’s sales performance but should business conditions continue to get tougher then it had contingency measures in place and would bring about additional cost adjustments in the next quarter.

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