North American stocks are likely to climb Monday morning, with focus on major banking and biotechnology deals in Europe and a fresh round of earnings results.

In today’s M&A news, British bank Barclays Plc said it will acquire Dutch bank ABN Amro NV for the equivalent of US$91.2 billion – the world’s biggest bank deal.

The deal would also see ABN Amro selling its U.S. unit, LaSalle Bank, to Bank of America Corp. for US$21 billion.

Britain’s AstraZeneca agreed to buy MedImmune for US$15.6 billion, in a deal that will transform the size of its biotechnology business and allow it to enter the vaccines market. AstraZeneca, as well as European peer Novartis, also reported profit growth in the first quarter.

In other earnings news, Hasbro swung to a first-quarter profit amid strong performance across the toy maker’s product lines. Revenue surged 34% to US$625.3 million.

Kimberly-Clark reported a 64% increase in quarterly profit, as results were helped by higher sales, especially in developing and emerging markets.

Earnings releases are also due after the close of trading from Juniper Networks, Amgen and Boston Scientific.

Here at home, Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. and CanWest Global Communications Corp. today announced that the Plan of
Arrangement pursuant to which AA Acquisition Corp. (formerly 6681859 Canada Inc.) would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Alliance Atlantis for $53 cash per share has cleared Canadian Competition Bureau review.

In economic news, sales of new motor vehicles recorded their second best year ever in 2006 for number of units sold and their best year in terms of value of sales, Statistics Canada reported today. Canadian consumers purchased 1,666,327 new cars and trucks for a total value of $54.6 billion.

The Canadian dollar open at US89.03¢, off 0.02 of a cent from Friday.

Light sweet crude for June delivery slipped 28¢ to US$63.83 a barrel in overnight electronic trading.

Key European indexes were higher following the announcement of the proposed merger between Barclays and ABN.

In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index edged up 0.02%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped 0.05% and Seoul’s benchmark index increased 0.74%.