Ready for a little good news? Try this: It may be a little beleaguered, but there's still a real economy out there where companies make things like communications gear and medicine and jet engines. And even in a period when things like toxic credit default swaps and noxious structured investment...  Continue reading

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges into oblivion and dismal corporate headlines are the daily norm, Abbott Laboratories quietly goes about its business, not making waves, doing what it does best -- operating a solid company built on dozens upon dozens of deals. The Abbott Park, Ill., maker of...  Continue reading

Cisco Systems Inc. does deals at a pace few companies can match: five so far in 2008 and more than 125 since 1993. Under John Chambers, who has been CEO since 1995, the company has executed a string of transactions that have moved it from the world of network backbones...  Continue reading

You'd expect the folks at General Electric Co. to have a first-rate process for choosing and executing transactions, and they do. But the thing that really sets GE apart is the process for improving the process -- that is, the way the company takes advantage of its huge scale, varied...  Continue reading

Regular visitors to this site may recall that in September we launched a survey to identify the Most Admired Corporate Dealmakers in three key industry sectors: healthcare, information technology and industrial. Well, despite a few minor distractions in the financial markets since then, The Deal's readers came through for us and identified the companies doing the best work in M&A in those...  Continue reading

It's not too hard to imagine a Corporate Olympics, where companies would showcase the different capabilities that make them successful. For anyone who follows business, some competition categories come quickly to mind. People have been recognizing standouts in sales and marketing, for example, for half a century or more. The...  Continue reading