Now the Dodgers are not on the block, but a divorce proceeding between the owners — Frank McCourt and his wife Jamie — has sparked speculation about the team’s future.

McCourt says a post-nuptial agreement gives him sole ownership and that the team is not for sale. But his wife says she is a co-owner and lawyer said she has lined up financing to buy out McCourt’s stake. While the two go at it, Cuban not-so-quietly told the newspaper he has received requests from fans asking him to buy the team.

“I’m not a fan of debt-driven acquisitions,” Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks wrote to the newspaper. “If a unique situation came up where I could contribute capital to buy out a majority shareholder and gain control, with existing shareholders or note holders staying in place, I would consider it.”

The McCourts announced their separation last month, after her husband fired her as chief executive of the team. Her husband claimed she was having an affair with her bodyguard-driver and was doing a poor job in her role as chief executive.

The Dodgers won’t be cheap. In April, Forbes magazine valued the Dodgers as the fourth most valuable team in baseball at $722 million. A 95 percent stake in the Chicago Cubs, ranked No. 5, just sold for a record $845 million.  Cuban didn’t make it to fourth base with the Cubs, but could he hit a home-run on this one?

We’ll have to wait and see. A December 15 hearing will decide the validity of the post-nuptial agreement between the McCourts.

* Google Inc will buy AdMob, one of the largest mobile advertising networks, for $750 million, widening its bet that cell phone advertising could become the Internet’s next-big money maker.

* Electronic Arts Inc acquires Playfish for $275 million as the maker of the “Madden NFL” series expands in the growing social gaming sector.

* And Cisco Systems Inc says shareholders holding just 9.37 percent of shares in Tandberg have accepted its $3 billion tender offer for the Norwegian videoconferencing company.

For more on these stories and the rest of the latest deal-related news from Reuters, click here.

And in the newspapers:

* London-headquartered private equity firm BC Partners will buy ATI Enterprises, a Texas-based operator of 24 educational campuses, for about $500 million, the Financial Times says.

* Turkey’s media group Dogan Yayin (DYHOL.IS), which is in a dispute over a record tax fine, denies a media report that five of its papers were being sold to Germany’s Axel Springer (SPRGn.DE).

* Morgan Stanley (MS.N) is close to investing $200-$300 million in Asian Infrastructure Pte,  India’s Economic Times says, citing unnamed sources.

* Magna’s (MGa.TO) co-chief executive told a German paper the Austro-Canadian company was not looking to team up with another auto maker after failing to clinch Opel, and will instead focus on its supply business. Reuters story here.

In lambasting a formal takeover offer from Kraft as “derisory”, Cadbury Chairman Roger Carr has both ratcheted up the rhetoric (an earlier letter to Kraft did not use this term) and struck a tone familiar to connoisseurs of bid battles. Carr, of course, is a veteran dealmaker himself.

UK targets have often found rejecting an approach as “derisory” is just scornful enough, without incurring the wrath of the Takeover Panel. Other approaches to have met with the same brushoff include Macquarie’s 2005 hostile bid for the London Stock Exchange and BHP Billiton’s epic tilt at rival miner Rio Tinto.  Over in Ireland, Aer Lingus has decried the advances of budget archrival Ryanair in exactly the same manner.

Still, a bit of bluster doesn’t mean a deal can’t eventually be done at whatever the opposite of a “derisory” price is. WPP, for example, eventually won over market researcher TNS, and brewer Scottish & Newcastle finally melted into the arms of Heineken and Carlsberg.

Kraft’s offer is actually worth less than an initial informal approach because its stock has fallen in the meantime. Monday’s move certainly hasn’t impressed Reuters columnist Neil Collins, who says Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld has “pressed the snooze button”.

This morning, Kraft formally bid for Cadbury with the same offer mooted two months ago, before today’s put-up-or-shut-up deadline. Cadbury has already said no to these terms, and can be expected to do so again. But the sinking expectations that Kraft might pay more, and the lack of any other buyers coming forward, don’t help to make the case for a successful hold out by Cadbury executives.

Over the weekend we learned that GE and Comcast agreed on a valuation of around $30 billion for a joint venture between NBC Universal and Comcast, ironing out what has been a key obstacle in talks so far. But French media conglomerate Vivendi, which owns 20 percent of NBC Universal, has not yet agreed to a deal, a source said.

So far as NBC is concerned, Vivendi is so far tres mum. Every year between mid-November and mid-December, Vivendi has to decide whether to exercise its option to sell its NBC Universal stake. Vivendi is believed to be eager to dispose of it, but nobody knows what they want for it.

For more on these stories, and the rest of the latest deals news from Reuters, click here.

And in the newspapers:

* Indian energy giant Reliance Industries (RELI.BO) is close to a nearly $6 billion overseas acquisition and the likely target is the assets of petrochemicals firm LyondellBasell, the Economic Times reported, citing an unidentified banker.

* NYSE Euronext (NYX.N)(NYX.PA), parent of the New York Stock Exchange, has expressed strong interest in a China listing as the country prepares to allow for such listings, Hong Kong media reported. Reuters story here.

* Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N). is preparing to pump at least $1 billion more into Clearwire Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

* Private equity fund CVC has pulled out of talks with General Electric (GE.N) about a possible joint bid for the power and transmission unit of France’s Areva (CEPFi.PA), a French financial news service reported on Sunday. Reuters story here.

* Tobacco giant Reynolds American Inc (RAI.N) is in advanced talks to buy a Swedish maker of products that help people stop smoking, the Wall Street Journal reported.

(Recasts lead)

If a deal can’t get done with the backing of Canada’s pension fund and capitalism’s mightiest bank, then the leveraged buyout market would truly be dead.

So it is with limited fanfare that DealZone welcomes the buyout of IMS Health by Canada’s public pension plan and Goldman Sachs as a sign of the market’s return to health. Green shoots in the LBO patch are hardly growing all jack-and-the-beanstalk, but putting together $4 billion for the prescription drug sales data provider is not just ice on the moon either.

Excluding debt, the $22-a-share cash deal is the biggest leveraged buyout since Bristol-Myers Squibb sold its ConvaTec unit to Avista Capital and Nordic Capital just over a year ago for $4.1 billion, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

Financing markets and general optimism have improved from the nadir of the crisis, and debt, if you can find it, is hardly expensive, with core rates at zero. But $4 billion pales in comparison with strategic deals in the health space this year, such as Wyeth’s $68 billion union with Pfizer.

It is safe to say, though, that had the IMS deal foundered, it would have been a far worse signal for LBOs than its success means for the relative health of the business.

Highlights from Thomson Reuters data on mid-market (sub-$500 milion) deals. For October in European, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA):

· Average bid premium four weeks prior to announcement increased on average across sectors in EMEA year to date compared to same period in 2008 by 2% with bid premia rising slightly with half the sector showing an increase and half decreasing.

· Year on year Average Rank Value to EBITDA however decreased by 16% on average with only the Real Estate and Materials sectors increasing.

· JP Morgan top the European Mid-Market M&A rankings YTD, up from third position for same period 2008

· EMEA Mid-Market M&A from January to end of October down 49.6% compared to same period last year, to US$110.2bn from US$218.8bn.

· EMEA Mid-Market M&A activity for October at US$12.2bn, down 12% from September’s US$13.9bn, but down 34.9% compared to October 2008 which stood at US$18.7bn.

Sector coverage:

· EMEA High Technology US$865m for October down 60% from US$2.2bn in October 2008.

· EMEA Media & Entertainment US$165m for October down 86% from US$1.2bn in October 2008.

· EMEA Telecommunications US$219m for October down 79% from US$1.1bn in October 2008

Global Mid-Market deal activity for October at US$46.8bn from 2,864 deals, down 11% from US$52.7bn from 3,207 deals in September but only slightly down compared to same month previous year from US$48.5bn.

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY’S BIGGEST DEAL
Berkshire Hathaway’s $35.9 billion bid for the remaining share capital of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, ranked as the fourth biggest M&A deal this year in the United States and the largest acquisition for Berkshire Hathaway on record.
Since 1980, Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries have announced nearly 200 acquisitions, with 43% of those deals in the industrials sector, 34% in the financials sector and 12% in energy & power.   Just over 90% of the acquisitions announced by Berkshire Hathaway have been based in the United States.

IMS HEALTH IN LARGEST BUYOUT SINCE 2007
IMS Health agreed to be acquired by TPG and the investment board of the Canada Pension Plan for $5.2 billion, marking the largest leveraged buyout in the United States since the $27 billion buyout of Hilton Hotels in July 2007.
Eight investment banks provided financial advisory services to IMS and the private equity consortium, including Evercore Partners which currently ranks fourth for year-to-date M&A in the United States, up from 16th last year at this time.

JAPANESE M&A UP 41% OVER 2008
This week’s $11.3 billion merger of Nippon Oil Corp and Nippon Mining Holdings Inc brings the volume of Japanese target M&A to $90.1 billion for year-to-date 2009, a 41% increase over 2008 levels and one of the few regions to see year-over-year M&A growth.
Merger activity in the Japanese financial sector accounts for 38% of year-to-date activity, followed by high technology and real estate with 17.1% and 13.3% respectively.  Energy & power mergers account for 13.0% of announced volume this year, nearly three times last year’s total.

And IPO flows from Asia continue — South Korea’s No. 2 insurer Korea Life Insurance may raise around $2 billion in the country’s biggest IPO since Lotte Shopping’s $3.8 billion listing in 2006.

For more on deal-related stories from Reuters, click here.

And here’s some picks from the papers:

* Intel, the world’s biggest chip maker, is planning to participate in bids invited by Indian state-owned telecom equipment maker ITI Ltd. to set up joint ventures, the Business Standard reports.

* Dutch telecoms group KPN mulls to sell its business-customer unit and fibre network in Belgium, Belgian daily De Tijd reports.

* Citigroup plans to relaunch its hedge fund unit, changing the name to Citi Capital Advisors, the Financial Times reports.

Just last week, Ropes & Gray partner Christopher Conniff talked with the New York Times for an article about the Galleon insider trading case, discussing the statue of limitations for these cases.

Today, nine more people were arrested in the Galleon Group insider-trading scandal, including Arthur Cutillo, a former associate at the tony, Boston-based law firm.

Ropes & Gray said in a statement that it was deeply disappointed to learn of the insider trading allegations, and the firm was moving quickly to protect its clients.

Conniff will not likely be publicly discussing the Galleon case any more.