M&A Deals Boost Stocks

Two more major merger announcements, plus a handful of smaller ones, has Wall Street in a good mood today following a few days of profit-taking. With thirty minutes until the close, the Dow is up 127 points to 9791, again putting the 10,000 mark in-play. The Nasdaq is up 40 points and the S&P 500 is up 18 points.

Today, Xerox (NYSE: XRX) announced a $6.4 billion stock and cash deal for Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (NYSE: ACS). In addition, Abbott (NYSE: ABT) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Solvay's pharmaceuticals business for EUR 4.5 billion ($6.6 billion) in cash.

Today's Xerox/Affiliated Computer and Abbott/Solvay's deals follows other multi-billion dollar deals recently, including Dell's (Nasdaq: DELL) $3.9 billion takeover of Perot Systems (NYSE: PER), Adobe's (Nasdaq: ADBE) $1.8 billion deal for Omniture (Nasdaq: OMTR), Baker Hughes' (NYSE: BHI) $5.5 billion takeover of BJ Services (NYSE: BJS), Disney's (NYSE: DIS) $4 billion takeover of Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL) and Kraft's (NYSE: KFT) hosile takeover offer for Cadbury (NYSE: CBY).

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