Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is heading toward Japan in a partnered bid with Aetos Capital LLC to buy Japanese property company Simplex Investment Advisors in a 65% premium share bid, for the equivalent of about $1.1 billion to $1.35 billion, depending on your price calculations in current and closing prices of yen on the Japanese stock prices versus closing prices. The bid is for at least 80% of Simplex, and it appears that Nikko Cordial, part of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) in Japan, is selling its 42.5% stake to the venture.

If you think the U.S. property weakness has been bad, the situation in Japan has been worse. Japan experienced its own bubble back in the 1980s, and only in recent years have things seemed to get better. Goldman Sachs has already been active in buying commercial and recreational properties in Japan over the last decade, but this would mark a larger leap into a property market that may hold relative values.

Goldman Sachs was Jim Cramer's #2 Value Pick for 2007, and he recently said he thinks its stock could go to $300.00 per share next year. If you look at how Goldman Sachs recently crushed earnings by betting against mortgages, you'll know why.

Goldman Sachs has raised over $4 billion this year for property acquisitions, so you can assume more land grabs are coming. Bloomberg has a pretty detailed piece that gives more background on the ongoing landgrabs in Japan. If you want to look up more data on Simplex Investment Advisors, it trades under the numeric stock ticker "8942" on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Jon Ogg produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Longleaf Funds, a long-term track record of excellent results, was featured in Barron's mutual fund section over the weekend. What is Mason Hawkins investing in? His largest position is in Dell Inc (NASDAQ: DELL) equaling 7.6% of holdings.

Japan was also a big theme with investments in NipponKoa Insurance, Olympus, Nikko Cordial, being all top holdings. Other Asian holdings included Chueng Kong and Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (NYSE: FFH).

Mexico-based Cemex Sab De CV (NYSE: CX) also topped the list along with European holdings Renault and Nestle.

Regarding U.S. holdings, in addition to Dell, Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (NYSE: IR) was at the top of the list.

One theme was certain, Hawkins is allocating a lot more of his capital outside the United States. Prior to this decade, Longleaf and Hawkins were not big international investors.

Forget about the problems of Citigroup's (NYSE:C) stock price and cost control. The big bank may not have time to fix its internal problems. It is still busy buying other companies.

Today, Citi announced that it would buy big Japanese brokerage firm Nikko Cordial for $10.75 billion. It may be a good deal for the Japanese company, but, by all accounts, Nikko is doing poorly. The company has had serious accounting problems. According to Reuters: "Nikko has admitted forging documents and booking about $300 million in excess profits over two years."

The problems at Nikko raise an interesting question for Citi and begs the question of whether this is another misstep by its management. Why won't Citi seek a joint venture or ownership state in Nomura or Daiwa Securities, two highly successful brokerages in Japan?

Citi CEO Charles Prince has enough trouble at the big financial services firm that he does not need to take up resources cleaning up a mess half way around the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.