It wouldn't be much better for Vivendi executives who have been candid about their disinterest in NBC Universal, an asset they've publicly dubbed "non-core"--and, perhaps more poignantly, their desire to off-load it to get "more headroom, " as Vivendi Chief Financial Office Philippe Capron put it at a conference in Spain last week.

FORBES: Mergers And Acquisitions

Professors Laurence Capron from INSEAD and Jung-Chin Shen from York University managed to obtain data on a large number of private deals and, guess what, in contrast to the public deals they examined, these did create some value!

FORBES: Acquisitions -- finally something to cheer about...?