The auction of fund company Putnam is proceeding. Apparently, parent company Marsh & McLennan has received three firm offers. The rumor mill holds that these firms are in the running: Power Corp. of Canada, UniCredito Italiano and Amvescap. It is interesting that all three are foreign firms. As it looks now, none of the bids is an outright winner. So the deal making will not wrap up this year. It's not clear that a deal will merge at all, and there seem to be a lot of contingencies that the would-be buyers want to negotiate. There is a final deadline for offers set for the end of this month, around Thanksgiving. Most analysts value the fund firm at around $3.5 billion. But the trendlines that bidders perceive would determine the premium. Obviously, the parent thinks the firm deserves a large multiple now that some big problems have been cleared up.

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