NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
More corporate mergers and a new tape purported to be from Osama bin Laden could both hit stocks Thursday.
U.S. stock futures pointed to a mixed or flat open. The S&P 500 futures fell on the first reports at about 5 a.m. ET of a new audio tape from bin Laden in which he criticized the Saudi regime for its U.S. ties and praised an recent attack on a U.S. consulate there.
Investors will also weigh a number of deal announcements. The largest is the long-rumored $25 billion deal in which Dow component Johnson & Johnson (Research) agreed to acquire medical device maker Guidant (Research). Shares of J&J were little changed in European trading early Thursday. The purchase was announced just after midnight but had been widely reported for the last week.
That was not be the only overnight deal by a Dow component. Early Thursday,United Technologies (Research) announced that British smoke alarms and fire-fighting equipment maker Kidde had accepted its previously announced unsolicited cash offer of $2.8 billion. Kidde rebuffed an earlier offer.
And in the second major software deal of the week, security software provider Symantec (Research) announced a $13.5 billion stock deal to buy Veritas Software (Research), a maker of backup software. The deal represents about a 10 percent premium for Veritas shareholders, based on Wednesday's closing prices, and a 22 percent gain from before reports of merger talks earlier in the week.
Major Asian markets closed lower on concerns about a weak dollar, although major European markets were up in early trading.
A report on the U.S. current account deficit, a broad measure of the flow of both goods, services and investments with other countries, is due out at 8:30 a.m. ET and it is forecast to rise slightly.
The increasing current account deficit is one of the things putting pressure on the dollar, which was slightly higher against the euro and a bit lower versus the yen in early trading ahead of that report.
Also due Thursday are the latest reading on weekly jobless claims and November housing starts and building permits.
U.S. stocks managed thin gains Wednesday in the face of a sharp hike in oil prices.
Oil prices gave back some gains Thursday. U.S. crude futures were down 20 cents to $43.99 a barrel in electronic trading, while Brent oil futures dropped 64 cents to $41.58 a barrel in London.
Bond prices were a touch lower, putting the yield on the 10-year treasury at 4.08 percent, up from 4.07 late Wednesday.
In other corporate news the Securities and Exchange Commission announced late Wednesday that mortgage financing company Fannie Mae (Research) must restate four years of earnings to recognize losses on investment instruments it used to protect itself from changes in interest rates. The company had announced in November that if such a restatement was required, it would reduce income by about $9 billion during that period.
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