Filed under: Deals, Good news, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Nokia Corp. (NOK)

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are partnering more than before as the world’s largest cellphone maker announced last Tuesday it will now be installing Google as the primary tool in the “Nokia Search” application that’ll eventually ship with nearly each Nokia phone sold worldwide. This is a big win for Google, already the world’s most-used search company.

To begin with, Nokia will set Google up as the search engine used when customers of such handsets like the Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic perform searches from their handsets. Eventually, Nokia customers in over 100 countries — and in 40 languages — will have access to Google search on all those handsets.

And therein lies the power Google has over information on this planet. IIkka Raiskinen with Nokia stated, “This integration allows our consumers the capability to use the innovative search technologies, which have made Google nearly synonymous with World wide web search.” There you have it — Google’s market leadership translated into a huge opportunity in the global wireless arena. It’s true that competitor Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is also heavily marching into wireless, but with that company’s identity crisis right now, Google stands to rule the wireless market as well as the Computer desktop.

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Filed under: Deals, Industry, Middle East, Politics

Qatar has begun to take a stake in Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS) and indicated that it is part of a program to put $15 billion into banks in the US and UK. “We have a relation with Credit Suisse and we bought some of the stock from the market, actually, but I cannot say what percentage because still we are in the process,” the Arab country’s prime minister told Bloomberg.

Qatar might get a opportunity to invest every last dime of its fund. While banks have written off some of their subprime exposure, they still have billions of dollars of structured investments on their balance sheets. They also face potential write-downs on credit card holdings and corporate LBO loans which could drop in value if the credit markets remain largely frozen.

With more losses nearly certain, many big banks will have to face what they will do if sovereign funds from Asia and the Middle East want to provide them with billions of dollars to rescue them in exchange for massive percentages of ownership. Congress has objected to some of these investments as partial takeovers of the most important banks in the US.

Unless the federal government wants to come up with the money, though, its objections are hollow.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Deals, Bad news, Industry

Massive mini-bond insurer Ambac (NYSE: ABK) is considering breaking itself into two pieces. One, which would handle its portfolio of municipal bonds could keep its high credit rating. The other piece would keep its structured financial investment in securities including subprime instruments. The second part of the company may be almost insolvent.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Bond insurers in current weeks have become ground zero in the global credit crisis because the companies contractually have concurred to stand behind billions of dollars in securities underpinned by U.S. subprime mortgage loans.”

While it is clear why this is good for cities and states whose bonds are insured by the company because that keeps their high credit ratings, it is less clear why it benefits Ambac’s common stockholders. If the operation is broken into two parts, who owns the valuable piece and who owns the worthless piece? In the end, stockholders who have already seen 80% of the market value in Ambac disappear as its shares have fallen, might get very tiny.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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