In this post lets take a quick look at The Top 10 Global Insurance Companies by 2008 revenues.

On October 27th, ING (ING) one of the world’s largest insurance companies, was forced to split itself into two in order to comply with the strict rules enforced by the EU on firms that received government financial aid during the credit crisis last year. ING plans to divest its US online baning operation ING Direct, insurance business and about 6% of the retail banking in domestic market. ING ranks 6th in the world based on its insurance revenues and 13th among European banks as of June this year.

Aviva Plc (AV) and Banco Santander Brazil SA (BSBR) are two new ADRs that started trading on the New York Stock Exchange last month.

1. Aviva Plc (AV):

It looks the federal government has been listening to the growing number of critics who have been chirping away about how foreign buyers are picking up Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) assets with little opposition from Ottawa.

It may explain why the federal government has decided to review Avaya’s (AV) $915-million purchase of Nortel Networks Corp’s enterprise business – a move that comes after Ottawa recently declined to review Ericsson’s (ERIC) $1.13-billion acquisition of Nortel’s CDMA wireless business and LTE R&D unit.

After the recent auction of Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) enterprise business was said and done, Siemens Communications (SI) lost by a measly $15-million – and the fact that its bid consisted of $700-million in cash and and IOU, while Avaya (AV) offered all cash.

But Siemens’ failure to win the auction was the last of many attempts it made to buy the enterprise business. According to an article in the Globe & Mail, Siemens approached Nortel last year about buying the business to create a $5-billion enterprise entity with strong footholds in Europe and North America.

After a three-day bidding process, Avaya (AV) has agreed to purchase Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) enterprise business for $900-million – nearly double the $475-million “stalking horse” bid it made last month.

Avaya won the business by outbidding Siemens Communications (SI), which submitted a last-minute bid on Sept. 4. The deal will give Avaya a business that had revenue of $2.4-billion in 2008 but has seen deteriorating sales in 2009 as Nortel has struggled through its bankruptcy protection process.

With today's deadline to submit bids for Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) enterprise business, I've learned from reliable sources that Siemens Gore will be making a competing bid.

As it now stands, Avaya (AV) is the only bidder in the “stalking horse” process with a $475-million offer.

Here’s a guest post by Jeff Wiener, president of telecom equipment reseller Digitcom, who also writes The Telecom Blog, on his outlook for the telecom equipment market.

No, I don’t have a crystal ball but I wish that I did. I am looking at the next generation of telecom, and wondering where this rapidly evolving market is headed. I’ve been in the telecom business for 19 years – it’s almost like a 6th sense (although my sense is sometimes off).

The truth is, the Silver Lake-led acquisition of Skype looks like both a technology and an infrastructure investment. Which may partially explain why Canada’s CPP Investment Board was able to get comfortable putting US$300 million into a deal that will live and die based upon technology and customer trends over the years to come.

For US$1.9 billion in cash and a US$125 million note, an investment group led by tech-saavy private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners (including venture-capital firms Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board) now own 65% of Skype. eBay (EBAY) keeps the rest. The US$2.75 billion valuation is healthy compared to a run-rate revenue of US$680 million; Q2’s revenue was up 25% versus the prior year. I was but one of the 142 million users registered for Skype during the previous 12 months. I suspect more than a few came via the profile Skype gets from the Oprah Show.

It looks like Avaya’s (AV) proposed $475-million acquisition of Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) enterprise business could face some stumbling blocks as a growing number of industry players express concern it would reduce competition.

The Wall St. Journal reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has received a letter and a complaint recent requesting it to block the proposed deal.

Even though Ericsson’s $1.13-billion bid for Nortel’s CDMA wireless business and its LTE R&D unit has prevailed over offers from Nokia Siemens (NOK, SI)and MatlinPatterson, many questions still have to be asked:

1. What exactly did Ericsson (ERIC) acquire? It bought the slowly-dying but still profitable CDMA business but what about the LTE component? How many patents are part of the deal?

It looks John McHugh, VP, enterprise data solutions with Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) enterprise business, looks to be getting his ducks lined for a new employer amid rumors the business could soon be sold to Avaya (AV) for $500-million.

In an interesting interview with Network World’s Tim Greene, McHugh suggests that Nortel should bring back the Bay Networks brand, which disappeared soon after Nortel purchased Bay for $9.1-billion at the peak of the telecom boom.

Most of my peers know I spend far too much time writing about Cisco (CSCO). For months, I've expected Cisco to announce some sort of official relationship with Apple (AAPL) involving the iPhone. Cisco continues to take a close look at the Apple device. But another big networking company -- Avaya (AV) -- has announced a strategy to ensure iPhones can connect securely to business networks.

Kudos to Avaya for spotting an obvious market opportunity -- and exploiting it. Lots of folks insist the iPhone is a consumer device. As an iPhone user and blogger who covers the networking industry, I strongly disagree.

The S&P 500 is currently up nearly 97% since the start of the bull market on 10/9/02. We took a snapshot of the stocks currently in the S&P 500 and measured their performance since the bull market began. Since 10/9/02, eighteen stocks in the index have achieved the elusive and coveted status of a tenbagger. Below we highlight the top and bottom 25 performing stocks. Of all stocks currently in the S&P, TSO is by far up the most at 6,968%. Other notable names on the tenbagger list are Apple (AAPL), Corning (GLW), Cummins (CMI) and Monsanto (MON). On the downside, Tenet Healthcare (THC) is down 93.14%, followed by New York Times (NYT). It's also noteworthy that only one homebuilder (LEN) is on the worst performing list, even after their huge declines this year.

Of the total unified communications market, unified messaging makes up the bulk of it. Avaya (AV) is the leading player but but the study suggests that rivals such as Nortel (NT), Cisco (CSCO) and Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) are gaining market share.

I'll take a punt that the underlying platform will support both - although possibly not in all operator-specific variants.

If the upper range is positive the stock is overbought according to the indicator, if the lower range is negative the stock is oversold.

I never did think that Nortel would or could step up to buy Avaya, because it simply did not make sense. The financials could not work for Nortel, which carries a market cap of only $11.5 billion. Most importantly, the product overlap is huge, and integrating the two companies is well beyond the resources available to the Nortel executive staff at the moment.

The comment about Nortel’s market cap is off the mark because it’s the structure of the deal (the amount, shares, stock, etc.) that are more important and relevant. His second point, however, is very on the mark.

As part of the terms and conditions of the merger agreement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Avaya has been granted a 50-day go-shop provision which allows them to potentially solicit better offers for the company.

The $17.50 payout is a 33% premium to Avaya’s average closing price — not bad.

Says Singh: