Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

♦  President Bush turned up outside the White House early this morning to urge lawmakers to pass the $700 billion bailout and a vote is expected later today. Bored today? The full text of the bailout is here. [NYT, WSJ]
♦  Citigroup has agreed to buy Wachovia in a deal brokerered by the FDIC. [Dealbook]
♦  The governments of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have teamed up to bail out Fortis, one of Europe's largest banks. [WSJ, Bloomberg] More

• Temasek, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, has "great confidence" in Merrill CEO John Thain. [Bloomberg]
• Henry Kravis's KKR, Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital are all in the running to acquire Neuberger Berman from an ailing Lehman Brothers. [Dealbook]
  
• Who is financing big real estate deals now that the banks are pulling back? Hedge funds, of course. [WSJ]
• Ricoh will buy Ikon for $1.6 billion. [Reuters]
• Mattel was awarded $100 mil. in a suit over the Bratz line of dolls. [NYP]
• Amazon is buying Shelfari, the social network for book lovers. [NYT]
• David Pecker is hoping a refinancing at AMI will allow him to keep the company under his control. [NYP]
• Some data suggests the U.S. housing market may be edging towards a rebound. [FT]

• The Weather Channel was sold by Landmark Communications to NBC Universal, Bain Capital, and Blackstone for just under $3.5 billion. [NYT]
• Merrill Lynch is moving closer to selling its stake in Bloomberg LP and may explore selling off its stake in BlackRock, too. [WSJ]
• Beleaguered automaker GM is planning to cut thousands of jobs and mulling whether to shed brands like Saturn and Saab. [WSJ]
• InBev's hostile takeover bid for Anheuser-Busch just got more hostile: the Belgian-Brazilian brewer moved to oust every member of the U.S. brewer's board. [Reuters]
• Jamie Dimon has high hopes for the prime brokerage unit JP Morgan acquired from Bear Stearns. [Bloomberg]
• Germany's Fresenius will buy U.S.-based APP Pharmaceuticals for $4.6 billion. [Bloomberg]