PAGE A10 Surprise Bidder for Guidant Boston Scientific made a $25 billion bid for the heart product maker Guidant, exceeding an offer by Johnson & Johnson.
Moulin's bid exceeds an offer of $22.50 a share from the Luxottica Group of Milan, the world's largest eyewear maker.
The bid exceeded a previous offer from Marriott, an American hotel chain, but still falls short of the $2 billion-plus that Compass had hoped to raise.Dow Chemical said that it would shed around 4,500 employees to help cut costs by more than $1 billion, as it completes a takeover of Union Carbide, a former rival, in a bad period for the chemicals industry.
BB&T, based in Winston-Salem, N.C., also agreed to sell or lease any of the branches it closes as a result of the acquisition to any commercial bank that makes an offer that equals or exceeds any offer from another business.
The bid by the firm, the Gores Technology Group, to buy Global Crossing out of bankruptcy, is expected to exceed a $750 million offer from Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong and Singapore Technologies Telemedia, these people said.
Hans Holbein the Younger's The Madonna with the Family of Mayor Meyer (1525 26), since 2003 on loan from a collector to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Ger., changed hands in a record-breaking private sale for Germany at more than $70 million, far exceeding a previous offer from the museum for $57 million.
Wind's bid of 11.5 billion euros, or about $9.7 billion, exceeded a 9 billion euro offer from Albacom, a business phone consortium that is 23percentt owned by British Telecommunications.
Holly Redshaw, 18, from New Barnet, got an A* English literature, an A in music and an A in classics, exceeding her offer from the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music to study a joint music course.
In the past, students that exceeded their offer may have managed to find a place through Clearing, or been encouraged to take a gap year and reapply the following year.
Maya Tikly-Young, 18, from Finsbury Park, got an A* in history, an A* in English literature and an A in French, exceeding her offer from Hertford College, Oxford, to study history.
