The catastrophe bond market will be heating up over the next few months, thanks to a combination of favorable market conditions and new investors. Michael Halsband, Vice President at Goldman Sachs (GS), said to Reuters that the cat bond issuance market got off to an early start in January, despite the fact that the first quarter is usually rather quiet. This follows the recent closing of the year's first cat bond, Foundation Re III, by The Hartford (HIG).

According to Halsband, "From January to June this year, $2.7 billion of transactions will mature and most of that is expected to be placed straight back into the ILS [insurance-linked securities] sector," continuing, "In addition, we believe between $1.5 and $2.5 billion of new capital has flowed into dedicated ILS funds and along with the $2.7 billion of maturities. Around $5 billion will be available to be put to work in the cat bond sector."

As more and more newspapers trim costs and find alternative information sources with lower costs, the Associated Press has seen revenues dwindle. The internet has swooped in and replaced the newspaper in many ways, and although the AP is big into online content as well, it hasn't landed huge deals with any huge internet properties. That is, until now.

According to Bloomberg, General Motors (GRM) is close to announcing a deal to sell its Saab division to Spyker Cars. A person familiar with the matter said that an announcement could come as early as late afternoon in Sweden. In Amsterdam, trading was suspended on the automaker amid the rumors.

Spyker has offered GM roughly $75 million in cash and $325 million preferred shares in Spyker, which would come from the transaction. Reportedly GM would receive $100 million of Saab's existing liquidity.

The government of Barbados agreed last month to guarantee a $60 million loan to re-start construction of a Four Seasons high-end development. In exchange for the loan guarantee, the government will take a 20% stake in the project.

A $60 million loan guarantee doesn't sound like much -- but for a country as tiny as Barbados, it's significant. Barbados has a GDP of $3.41 billion, compared with $14.2 trillion for the United States. So, relative to GDP, this is the equivalent of the United States government offering a $249.8 billion loan guarantee.

Can you imagine the populist outrage that would ensue if President Obama announced that the government was providing a $249.8 billion loan guarantee for a resort.

Conan O'Brien is to receive $40 million dollars to walk away from NBC. O'Brien's agreement would bar him from bad mouthing his NBC bosses.

There has been a two week battle between NBC and O'Brien over the network's plan to move the comedian to a later 12:00 am time slot. Part of the plan is to reinstate Jay Leno in his old time slot at 11:30 p.m. which he has held for 17 years.

This morning, Tyco International (TYC) announced that it will purchase Brink's Home Security Holdings (CFL) for $2 billion. The $2 billion will be comprised of cash and stock. TYC noted that the deal will combine two of the top companies in North American residential and commercial security under the ADT banner.

Brink's/Broadview Security reportedly has more than 1.3 million recurring revenue accounts in North America, with revenue of roughly $565 million. This is roughly a quarter of ADT's 4.8 million accounts.

Kraft Foods (KFT) agreed a deal to buy Cadbury (CBY) for around 11.9 billion pounds ($19.6 billion), creating the world's top confectioner. Kraft had to increase its offer, injecting more cash into the bid to win over the 186-year-old Cadbury, which has finally surrendered its independence and accepted the sweetened offer.

Kraft's offer is 840 pence per Cadbury share, with shareholders also getting a 10 pence special dividend, bringing the offer to a total of 850 pence per share. The new bid has won unanimous recommendation from the Cadbury board. Cadbury shares hit a record high of 838 pence in early trade in London and jumped over 5% to $54.63 in premarket trading.

Since May 2007, the shares of Bare Escentuals (BARE) have had a hard time, going from $41.50 to a low of $3.66 (last March). But as the equities markets have rallied, so have the company's shares.

Now, the company has accepted a $18.20 buyout from Shiseido, which is the largest cosmetics company in Japan. The transactions comes to $1.7 billion and represents a juicy 43% premium over Thursday's stock price.

The Twitter-verse continues to get interesting. I've always felt that the returns are to be found around Twitter rather than with Twitter itself, and the venture capital community seems to be acting from the same position. Twitter interaction platform HootSuite just announced a new round of venture capital funding, with $1.9 million in fresh money coming in the door to support its growth efforts.

HootSuite, which was started by Invoke Media in November 2008, has evolved into a brand monitoring, file-sharing and social media integration utility. Only a year later, it has attracted more than 300,000 users, from Time (TWX) to Martha Stewart to the White House to Aol (AOL).BloggingStocks is among the Aol blogs using HootSuite.

It looks like 2010 could be a strong year for tech IPOs. Some of the prospects include LinkedIn, Yelp and yes, Facebook.

But there is another worthy candidate: Zillow. However, according to a piece in Bloomberg.com, the company thinks the timing for an IPO is better for 2011.

Shares of Cadbury (CBY) are moving slightly higher today, on news that Hershey (HSY) could be announcing a solo bid for the company as early as next week.

It was just a couple days ago that Cadbury rejected another bid, for $16.91 billion from Kraft Foods (KFT).

America Movil (AMX - option chain) stock is trading lower today after the company said last night that it plans to make buyout offers for Telmex and Telmex Internacional in an effort to create a Mexican telecom giant with 250 million service subscriptions. Any deal would require approval from the Federal Competition Commission, Mexico's antitrust regulator, but billionaire Carlos Slim already controls each company and is looking to consolidate. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on AMX.

This morning, AMX opened at $47.75. So far today the stock has hit a high of $47.79 and a low of $46.75. As of 11:50, AMX is trading at $47.01, down $3.00 (-6.0%). The chart for AMX looks neutral and S&P gives AMX a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.

According to a published report in The Wall Street Journal , the Associated Press (AP) and Yahoo! (YHOO) are close to a deal that could drive up the price on AP stories distributed through Yahoo!'s news site.

The ever-popular "people familiar with the matter" told The Journal that the deal would include tighter restrictions, which would drive the price of the content higher. This deal could bring about a resolution in the "increasingly urgent issue in the media industry" of determining how news organizations and Internet outlets can co-exist. Some publishers feel that the Internet portals "unfairly profit from their work and cost them tens of millions of dollars in revenue."

Former Governor of Alaska and Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, will work for Fox News as an on air contributor.

Palin will provide political analysis and commentary for Fox News. She will also host a series called: "Real American Stories."

While the merger may not have been a surprise thanks to what is called "global consolidation" brewing world, the winner of the competition was. Femsa Cerveza (FMX) -- brewer of Dos Equis, Sol, and Tecate -- was purchased by Heineken in a deal worth $5.5 billion in stock. Heineken is widely considered a "surprise" winner of the Femsa sweepstakes, as most industry analysts were chalking up Femsa to a purchase by SABMiller.

Heineken already held a stake in Femsa's Brazilian operations and distributes the Femsa brands in the United States. As a result of the deal, Femsa will hold a fifth of Heineken, which equals 12.5% of Heineken N.V. stock; Femsa will also have 14.9% of Heineken Holding.