Mergers & acquisitions.

• Position: Attitude at Altitude

Offers and propositions made the biggest news in mergers and acquisitions in Colorado last month, although a steady stream of closed deals, some of them big ones, indicated the state's M&A market is still pumping out results.

MacDermid Inc., a specialty chemical manufacturer that moved to Colorado from Connecticut in 2004 but has only a small number of its employees here, announced it was considering a $1 billion buyout offer from its own CEO, Daniel Leever, and a New York private equity firm, Court Square Capital Partners.

And New Frontier Media Inc., Boulder's largest adult-entertainment company, saw a stock-price increase after a document was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that indicated Warren Lichtenstein, of New York based Steel Partners II, was interested in a management buyout of the company that operates pay-per-view and on-demand television channels featuring adult fare.

One of the largest telecommunications mergers, actually conducted across the Atlantic Ocean, between Paris and Trenton, N.J., brings together Lucent Technologies Inc. and Alcatel SA, both of which have had a role in Colorado's tech-industry expansions and contractions. The $10.9 billion merger was approved by shareholders Sept. 8. Patricia Russo, new CEO of the combined operations, has said that 9,000 of a total 88,000 workers will be let go, but no one has said yet what ripples such action might have on the 400 Lucent workers who call the state home. Alcatel also has been a significant employer in the past, and over the last five years has increased its business partnerships and vendor relationships with Colorado companies.

What follows is a roundup of some of the biggest and latest mergers and acquisitions of the past month.

TRANSMONTAIGNE

TransMontaigne Inc. stockholders approved the exit of Colorado's third largest Fortune 500 company by Sept. 1, reducing the state's membership in that prestigious list to nine companies, and its membership on the Fortune 1,000 list to 16. TransMontaigne was taken private by Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc., for a common stock price of $11.35 a share. TransMontaigne marketed and distributed petroleum products from its Denver headquarters. It also ranked third on the ColoradoBiz list of the state's Top 100 Public Companies in the June issue, posting 2005 revenues of $8.5 billion, down almost 24 percent from 2004. It reported then it had more than 700 employees nationwide.

QWEST/ONFIBER

Qwest Communications...