Teva Pharmaceuticals, one of the biggest generic drug companies in the world, will acquire leading European generics company Ratiopharm for $5 billion. The New York Times reports:

“This transaction is perfectly aligned with our long-term strategy in which Europe is an important pillar and growth driver,” the chief executive of Teva, Shlomo Yanai, said in a statement. “Ratiopharm will provide us with the ideal platform to strengthen our leadership position in key European markets, most notably in Germany, as well as rapidly growing generic markets such as Spain, Italy and France.”

In winning Ratiopharm, Teva topped the world’s biggest maker of brand-name drugs, Pfizer, and Actavis, a generic maker based in Iceland. Ratiopharm’s parent company, VEM Vermögensverwaltung, put the company up for sale last year after the suicide of Adolf Merckle, who founded Ratiopharm in 1973.

The pharmaceutical industry has been seeing a lot of M&A during the past 6 months. I wouldn’t be surprised if drugs, even generics, soon come from only a handful of companies (a smaller handful than they already come from).

Because of its losses and “the increasingly competitive industry conditions,” the company sees “substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern,” according to the company’s filing. Blockbuster said if its operating results don’t improve and if it is unable to refinance or restructure its debt, it “could require us to pursue a restructuring of our indebtedness or file for protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.”

Last month, Movie Gallery Inc., which also owns Hollywood Video, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It is liquidating at least 760 stores.

Carl Icahn and Goldman Sachs respectively own 10.8% and 9.9% of the company, according to the article.

Blockbuster hasn’t exactly been competitive during the past decade or so. Still, it will be sad to see the neighborhood video store go.

Impress your friends this year with one of the 25 St. Patrick’s Day toasts and Irish sayings below. If you rattle off one quote per beer, this entire post should get you through the night:

1. If you’re enough lucky to be Irish, you’re lucky enough! –Irish saying

2. Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers. -Unknown

3. Here’s to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and an honest one
A cold beer – and another one!
-St. Patrick’s Day Toast

4. It is better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money! -Irish toast

5. An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth. -Irish saying

6. There are only two kinds of people in the world, The Irish and those who wish they were. -Irish saying

7. Irish diplomacy is the ability to tell a man to go to hell so that he looks forward to making the trip. –Irish saying

8. An Irishman has an abiding sense of tragedy which sustains him through temporary periods of joy. –Irish saying

9. The Irish forgive their great men when they are safely buried. –Irish saying

10. Anyone acquainted with Ireland knows that the morning of St. Patrick’s Day consists of the night of the seventeenth of March flavored strongly with the morning of the eighteenth. –Uknown

11. May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.
- Irish blessing

12. Never iron a four-leaf clover, because you don’t want to press your luck. -Unknown

13. A best friend is like a four leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have. -Unknown

14. The list of Irish saints is past counting; but in it all no other figure is so human, friendly, and lovable as St. Patrick – who was an Irishman only by adoption. -Stephen Gwynn

15. St. Patrick… one of the few saints whose feast day presents the opportunity to get determinedly whacked and make a fool of oneself all under the guise of acting Irish. –Charles M. Madigan

16. May misfortune follow you the rest of your life, but never catch up. –Irish saying

17. May your home always be too small to hold your friends. –Irish toast

18. May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.
—Irish prayer

19. May you never forget what is worth remembering or remember what is best forgotten. –Irish blessing

20. In Heaven there is no beer that’s why we drink it here! –Irish saying

21. May God bless and keep in good health your enemies’ enemies. –Irish blessing

22. May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past. –Irish saying

23. Here’s to you and yours and to mine and ours. And if mine and ours ever come across to you and yours, I hope you and yours will do as much for mine and ours as mine and ours have done for you and yours! –Irish toast

24. May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live. –Irish saying

25. Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbor. It makes you shoot at your landlord-and it makes you miss him. -Irish saying

Facebook will likely let users create QR (Quick Response) codes for their profiles. QR codes are like personal bar codes, but they hold more information. When a mobile phone camera reads a QR code, it converts the QR code’s content (text, links, photos, and other media) into a readable format. TechCrunch has the scoop on Facebook’s experiment:

…we’ve gotten a number of tips in our inbox in the past 10 minutes so it’s safe to assume it’s not a hoax or anything: Facebook appears to have started enabling users to generate custom two-dimensional QR codes.

“We’re always testing various features on the site, but we have nothing more to share at this time.”

While status updates may not be the most fascinating use of QR codes, Facebook’s move does reflect a bigger trend. PCWorld has more on their overall use:

The QR Codes are just a simple bridge from the Internet to the “Outernet,” a concept that seems to be on many people’s minds here (at SXSW, where the article was written). They allow you to get Internet content about something that you are close to or looking at in the real world.

And don’t be surprised if you start seeing QR Codes as standard on business cards everywhere.

Phillips-Van Heusen, whose brands include Kenneth Cole, BCBG, and Calvin Klein, will add Tommy Hilfiger to its stable starting today. Phillips-Van Heusen will buy Hilfiger for $3 billion in cash and stock. The New York Times has the story:

With the acquisition, Phillips-Van Heusen…will seek to take advantage of Tommy Hilfiger’s strong European distribution channels for its own products. Despite Tommy Hilfiger’s reputation as a quintessentially American clothier, two-thirds of the company’s business is based in Europe.

(After experiencing a downturn in sales, Hilfiger has) sought to reclaim its preppy heritage, slimming down its sizes and returning to an image of young American aristocrats at play. That has rejuvenated the company’s fortunes, first in Europe and then elsewhere.

Tommy Hilfiger himself hasn’t managed the company in years, instead spending his time on activities like hitting Axl Rose. He remains a primary designer and public face for the company.

Bank of America recently experienced a home seizure FAIL. The bank ransacked a woman’s home, padlocked her doors shut, and seized her parrot–by accident. The bank accidentally foreclosed on her home, even though her mortgage payments were up to date. She is rightfully suing them. ABCNews has the story:

Angela Iannelli returned home one day in October to find her house ransacked, doors padlocked and pet parrot Luke gone. But it wasn’t a burglar. It was Bank of America. The bank had repossessed her home even though the mortgage was up to date.

As the number of foreclosures increases across the country, experts say, so do mistakes, such as mixing up names and addresses as they are passed from department to department.

“Bankster” is pretty cliched by now, but this story fits the term like a glove.

The 2010 Forbes billionaire list awarded Carlos Slim Helu its richest man in the world honor. The Mexican tycoon is worth $53.5 billion, beating out Bill Gates ($53 billion) and Warren Buffett ($47 billion). Here are the top 10 richest men in the world, summed up from Forbes’ excellent list:

1. Carlos Slim Helú
Mexican billionaire who owns the biggest mobile phone company in Latin America, American Movil. He also owns a construction conglomerate, as well as stakes in Saks, the New York Times Co., Bronco Drilling, Inbursa, and Independent News & Media.

2. William Gates III
American billionaire who now runs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Besides stakes in Microsoft, he also has large stakes in Televisa, Auto Nation, and the Four Seasons hotel chain.

3. Warren Buffett
Through Berkshire Hathaway, this famous American controls Geico, Dairy Queen, BYD (an electric carmaker), MidAmerican Energy, and now Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

4. Mukesh Ambani
This Indian petrochemical tycoon runs Reliance Industries, India’s leading oil, gas and chemical giant. He owns the Mumbai Indians cricket team, to boot.

5. Lakshmi Mittal
Mittal, who is from India, runs the worlds biggest steelmaking company, ArcelorMittal. He also owns part of a British soccer team and sits on the boards of Goldman Sachs and EADS.

6. Larry Ellison
The Oracle founder, from the US, isn’t doing too badly after recently buying Sun Microsystems. According to Forbes, he also “won America’s Cup in February, besting longtime rival billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli.” Those billionaires sure can race, can’t they?

7. Bernard Arnault
This Frenchman builds his fortune off defining the luxury lifestyle. He owns Louis Vuitton parent company LVMH, which is also developing high-end commercial property in Shanghai, runs a French tour operator, builds yachts, and built a French ski resort. He’s probably the kind of billionaire you want to hang out with.

8. Eike Batista
This Brazillian oil and mining tycoon also runs a shipbuilding business (OSX) that may raise $5.6 billion–the biggest IPO in the world this year (so far). He also lives it up, according to Forbes, which says he is a “onetime champion offshore powerboat racer; formerly married to Playboy cover girl.”

9. Amancio Ortega
Women around the world thank this Spanish fashion mogul for stores like Zara and Stradivarius. Like a proper tycoon, he also dabbles in real estate, soccer, horse-jumping, banks, tourism, and gas. Oddly, he is betting on real estate in Coral Gables, Fla.–does he know something we don’t?

10. Karl Albrecht
This German grocery entrepreneur founded Aldi. He also cultivates orchids. That’s about as much as anyone knows about him, writes Forbes.

Read the rest of the list here.

Overall, there are fewer Americans on the list, but more Chinese, Turkish, Taiwanese, Russian, Brazilian, and Indian billionaires. For a good analysis of the global members of the list, read this Christian Science Monitor article.

AIG will sell its American Life Insurance Company (Alico) to Metlife for $15.5 billion in cash and equity. Alico sells health, life, and other types of consumer and business insurance in more than 50 countries. Alico’s sale comes one week after AIG agreed to sell Asian life insurance company AIA to Prudential. Bloomberg reports:

MetLife plans to sell $2 billion in common stock and $3.1 billion of senior debt to help finance the cash portion of the deal, the company said. It will also pay AIG with 78.2 million shares of its common stock, which New York-based MetLife values at about $3 billion, the company said. The balance of the equity portion will be paid in $2.7 billion of contingent convertible preferred stock and $3 billion of equity units, MetLife said

Alico has more than 20 million customers and 12,500 employees, AIG said today. The unit posted about $2.2 billion in pretax operating income last year, a 16 percent increase from $1.9 billion in 2008, MetLife said in a slide presentation. The business had $89 billion in assets under management as of the end of 2008. MetLife said it expects to retain “almost all” of Alico’s employees.

The Wall Street Journal says the purchase numbers look promising for Metlife–and Metlife investors:

As analysts start digging into the numbers, they like what they see.

Lots of other potential plusses come out of this morning’s MetLife call: MetLife execs say that Alico has only $200 million in financial institutions’ hybrid securities and “very little” exposure to Italian, Irish and Spanish debt, widely viewed as possible crises following Greece’s sovereign debt crisis. MetLife execs say that Alico has $1.2 billion in Greek sovereign debt, a relief to those who had pegged it higher. Together, these comments appear to put a limit on how much damage MetLife see following the next big crisis.

As for AIG, the Alico sale makes its debt burden smaller, which in turn reduces makes taxpayers’ AIG bailout burden. Keep spinning ‘em off, AIG.

Nissan is recalling 540,000 cars, mostly in the US, for braking and fuel gauge problems. The brake pedals may come loose and limit braking force on Armada SUVs, Titan pickups, and Quest minivans made in 2008-2010. Armadas and Titans from 2005-09, as well as Frontiers, Xterras, and Pathfinders from from 2006 and 2008 may have gas gauges that show a quarter of a tank of gas when in fact the tank is empty.

What gives with all these recalls? Ironically, companies want to prove that they’re producing quality vehicles, according to a Toledo Blade source:

The action follows global recalls of more than 8 million vehicles by Toyota Motor Corp. for issues including unintended acceleration, which have prompted lawsuits and congressional hearings. The cases have triggered a review of the safety agency by the U.S. Transportation Department’s inspector general to examine the way government investigators monitor automobile defects.

“A lot of car makers are coming out with recalls as they want to show that they are being strict about quality,” said Jeong Min-pak, a senior director at Fitch Ratings in Seoul. “They want to avoid the negative press that Toyota has received.”

By recalling their cars, these companies are also sending a message that “you can’t trust us anymore.” I understand that these recalls are preventative, but I don’t think they’re helping perception of the automakers, especially Japanese automakers.

The Sawgrass Marriott Resort in Florida, where Tiger Woods issued his famous apology, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bloomberg reports:

RQB Resort LP listed assets and debt of as much as $500 million each in Chapter 11 documents filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Jacksonville, Florida. RQB Development also sought protection. The 508-room hotel resort has rights to 85 percent of starting times each day to the Players Stadium Course through 2089.

RQB Resort is the owner of the hotel and cabana club. RQB Development is the owner of the golf villas, the spa and related development rights.

Although the Tiger correlation likely has no causal effect, it is interesting.