Turns out that running the show at Valeant has given Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman quite the appetite. He’s looking to satisfy that hunger (and get back to the business of maximizing returns by pushing companies to make changes) by snapping up a 9.9% stake in Chipotle – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
In other activist news, Carl Icahn’s taking Federal-Mogul Holdings Corp. private by buying the remaining 18% of the company he doesn’t already own – NYTimes and Law360
Enbridge (Sandpiper pipeline be damned) has agreed to purchase Spectra Energy corp. in an “all-stock deal valued at $28 billion”—a move seen as a “bullish bet” away from crude and into natural gas by the Canadian pipeline operator – WSJ and Bloomberg
More from Deutsche Bank in support of its motion to dismiss an investor suit led by BlackRock alleging that the bank failed to protect investors from losses due to poorly underwritten RMBS – Law360
If naysaying’s your thing, here’s some more ammo when it comes to the state of the US economy – Bloomberg
The Deal Professor walks us through the rather dangerous waters that Elon Musk needs to navigate as his shareholders consider Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity – NYTimes
As bad as the negative rate environment is for conservative European investors, some companies are loving the idea of getting paid to borrow money via corporate bonds – WSJ
Economists have—surprise, surprise—run the numbers, and many of them are choosing Silicon Valley over academia these days – NYTimes
After years of mystery, it turns out that the ESA did actually succeed in crashing its Philae lander on a comet. Always the overachiever, its US counterpart (NASA) is proposing to fly the craft Osiris-Rex to an asteroid, collect some rock samples, and head back to Earth for study of the samples. That 7-year mission launches later this week – NYTimes