By Tara Lachapelle, Brooke Sutherland & Miles Weiss Blackstone Group LP (BX) and Carl Icahn’s bids for Dell Inc. (DELL) are employing a rarely used deal tactic that has yielded both big payouts and big losses for shareholders. The offers allowing investors to retain stock in the floundering personal-computer maker may help them win over shareholders like Southeastern Asset Management...

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“Large deals are flashy and they get people’s attention,” said Scott Rostan, who once analyzed mergers at Merrill Lynch & Co. and now runs New York-based Training The Street, giving instruction on takeovers to new hires at banks. “But the large, transformational deals are really hard to pull off. Typically you have to pay a big price to convince the seller. Synergies are very hard to realize. There may be cultural differences. Put that all together and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.”

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