XM-Sirius: We could almost hear Mel Karmazin cracking the champagne from here. The 520 day wait is finally over. The FCC this week reached an agreement to approve the merger of the two satellite radio companies. Now, the hard part begins — integrating the two firms and competing in a environment that is quickly changing.

Ken Wilson: When the President calls and offers you a job saving the country, it is hard to say no. And Goldman Sachs’s most senior financial-institutions banker didn’t. Wilson is temporarily leaving the firm to advise Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on how to resolve the country’s banking crisis. Few seem better prepared. After all, he has already advised on most of the big deals that have saved financial institutions this past year.

Swiss M&A: From Roche-Genentech to Novartis-Alcon and the spinoff of Philip Morris International (based in Switzerland), one thing is clear — Swiss firms have become deal making enthusiasts in 2008. Mergers and acquisitions involving a Swiss company account for 22.5% of all European deals this year, compared with 4% for all of last year.

Wachovia: Can the Charlotte-based bank’s $25.5 billion acquisition of Golden West Financial officially be called a deal from hell? Wachovia/Golden West now seems to qualify, if only because of the destruction of market value. At the time of the deal, Wachovia had a market cap of $90.2 billion and predicted that with Golden West its combined market cap would be $117 billion. Wachovia’s market cap hit $25.87 billion this week and is hovering just above $30 billion today, or not much more than Wachovia paid to acquire Golden West.

Cleveland-Cliffs: By not consulting its largest shareholder, Harbinger Capital, before unveiling its $10 billion deal for Alpha Natural Resources, Cleveland-Cliffs faces the likelihood that its deal for Alpha won’t be approved and may have inadvertently put itself in play.

Roche: The Swiss drug maker’s offer to acquire the roughly 44% of Genentech it didn’t already own fell flat. At $89 a share, the offer marked just an 8% premium. Now, Genentech is standing up for itself, shares closed at $96 and a shareholder lawsuit has been filed. And as this Deal Journal post explains, negotiations already were fraught with plenty of issues. Perhaps biggest among them is keeping Genentech’s talent.

Microsoft-Yahoo: Now that Yahoo and Carl Icahn have made peace and Microsoft has washed its hands of the deal, it is time to ask this question: Has any takeover battle left the two firms involved looking so bad. See this Deal Journal post and this one for more.