If it's November, it must be time for some mergers. Sometime back in late July, a bored investment banking VP, mad at being stuck in the office shepherding the summer associates while all the managing directors were at their houses in the Hamptons, came up with a plan. A pitch. A huge acquisition. A strategic merger! The summer associate, blinded by the glamor of writing something that would one day soon be on the desk of the CEO of Bank of America Corporation (NYSE:BAC), or Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ), or Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (NYSE:FCX), made it look fabulous. The synergies would be mind-blowing, the financial impact, in the billions.

When the managing director was wooed back from the Hamptons with the promise of a meeting with Ken Lewis at Bank of America, or the Blackstone Group's patrician Jonathan D. Gray, she realized this was a brilliant idea. And immediately saw the M&A fee, like hundreds of gallons of revenue pushing the millwheel of the group's bonus pool. The summer associate carried the dozen color copies of the pitchbook to some vastly inferior city and the CEO was convinced.

Come November, the summer associate is pouring back Yuenglings at business school, basking in the full-time job offer he received to return to the investment bank, and in the nick of time, right before the managing director checks out for the holiday season, the mergers have been launched. They're not all successful, but that's part of the fun: that bored vice president will be ever more busy and will naturally have to cancel his trip home to Maine for Thanksgiving launching a counter-offer. Here's a rundown of the successful and not-so-successful deals of the day: