2010 Could Be an Explosive Year for M&A

Even though the New Year has only just begun, we've already seen some big merger and acquisitions action. Novartis (NVS) agreed to pay $28 billion for the rest of Alcon (ACL) it doesn't already own; Nestle says it will buy the U.S. frozen-pizza business from Kraft (KFT) for $3.7 billion; and Apple (AAPL) picked up a red-hot mobile startup, Quattro Wireless.