Deal rumors: Cigna-Aetna? Comcast+TMobile/Sprint/Verizon?

Stock prices are high, employment is up, and investment bankers are frantically whispering blockbuster deals, in hopes they could still score a few fat paydays before the Fed boosts interest rates and acquisitions start to get a bit more expensive, after so many years of cheap money:

1) MOBILE -- Today's German financial news rumor that Comcast has talked to Deutsche Telecom about buying T-Mobile --  which Comcast people have been quick to discount, noting they can more easily resell Verizon mobile service -- follows yesterday's speculative Trefis report that Comcast might buy Sprint. 

Sounds familiar to Kevin Smithen, telecom analyst at Macquarie, which owns Philadelphia-based Delaware Investments: "Comcast (is) the best strategic partner for T-Mo, long term," since Comcast could give T-Mobile the mobile-video streaming it will need to make its wifi competive. "We think a deal with Comcast in the low to mid $40s (a share)" works for Deutsche. But Smithen's also skeptic this will close just now, "given Comcast's focus on its wifi rollout and the recent FCC defeat on TWC." Comcast could still move soon -- if it's worried about  "the risk of falling behind in the convergence game" -- and if Deutsche sees Comcast as a fitting partner.

2) HEALTH PLANS -- In other billion-dollar merger-rumor news with big potential Philly impact: the Hartford Courant has documented the back-and-forth rumors of how Aetna and Cigna (two giant Connecticut-based health insurers with large Philadelphia-area back-office operations) and UnitedHealth, Humana and other big providers, flush with cash from new customers covered by Obamacare, are also looking to combine, boosting share prices of perceived acquirees (especially Cigna, see 5-day chart here).

Health insurer consolidation, after years of IT offshoring and job consolidation by Independence Blue Cross and other big insurers, will likely boost the efficiency of the notoriouly costly U.S. healthcare payment system; it also threatens mass job cuts, which could hit especially hard in Center City, where Cigna still has operations after moving its headquarters to Connecticut a couple of years ago, and Blue Bell, where the former US Healthcare complex and its successors remain a center of Aetna operations.