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“I don’t throw darts at a board,” said Gordon Gekko of “Wall Street” fame. “I bet on sure things.”

Warren Buffett may seem like a gentle investment genius, but he certainly has a little Gekko in him.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is putting up more than $6 billion to help fund Mars Inc.’s purchase of Wim. Wrigley Jr. Co., not just because he believes so much in the companies and their respective brands or because he loves the taste of their chocolate, but because he was basically handed a sure thing.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway will provide $4.4 billion of subordinated debt to help fund the deal, then buy a $2.1 billion minority equity interest in the Wrigley Co. subsidiary at the closing of the deal. The “sure thing” is that Berkshire will be buying the stake “at a discount to the share price being paid to stockholders of Wrigley.”

It’s no wonder he said in an interview on CNBC that nothing can go wrong with the Mars and Wrigley brands.

It doesn’t take a genius to make money on a deal where you buy stock below the price it’s being sold on the same day. Then again, anyone that has $4.4 billion to put up to get a chance at a sure thing is by definition a genius.

Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. are giving themselves until the end of 2008 to win merger clearance from the Justice Department. Getting the Northwest pilots on board with the deal might take at least that long, if at all.

The two groups of pilots have been meeting since the beginning of the year, agreeing on at least a collective bargaining deal and an equity stake in the merged airline but remaining far apart on merging pilot seniority lists. After Delta pilots rejected arbitration and a call by Northwest’s pilots to delay Monday’s announcement, the lines were drawn.

“One can only conclude that the Delta pilot leadership and Delta management have made an arrangement to try to disadvantage the Northwest pilots economically and with respect to our seniority,” said Dave Stevens, head of Northwest’s pilot’s association. “No pilot group is going to put up with this. No amount of money can sustain a carrier which creates this level of discord.”

Delta pilots agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement through 2012, which would give them a 3.5% equity stake in the new carrier, a 5% pay increase starting in 2009 and a two-year exemption from furloughs. Delta’s pilot’s union leadership, in a letter to members, said it “unanimously adopted and enthusiastically endorses” the new terms.

But little was said in Delta’s announcements of the Northwest pilots, other than Delta saying it would try to get a deal done in the next six to eight months.

Ed Bastian, Delta’s president and chief financial officer, said “there will be continuous sort of best efforts to try to get to that single agreement and to get to a combined seniority list prior to closing.” He also said, ”There is a substantial amount of time to allow the parties to do that and if that turns out to be the case, that will be a milestone event that no other airline merger will have even come close to accomplishing.”

He’s not exaggerating. Northwest’s pilots are firmly against the deal. “As hard as a standalone course may be in these economic times, it is our judgment that it carries less risk than the merger path which now lies before us,” Stevens wrote to the union members. “For that reason, we will be turning our efforts to stopping this merger.”

The integration issue could hang around for some time, even after the deal is complete, said Avondale Partners analyst Bob McAdoo. “Given the history of these types of agreements, we would rather bet on the seniority issue dragging out for months after the merger is complete.”

For proof, look to the U.S. Airways takeover of America West, announced three years ago and arguably the last successful major airline merger in the U.S. The merger of the two airlines still hasn’t brought about a full integration of its pilots or flight attendants.

It looks like the merger and acquisition party is over.

After four years of tremendous deal flow at record-breaking levels, U.S. M&A activity is on track to see its first annual decline since 2002, according to a recent report from Thomson Financial Proprietary Research.

This has only happened five times since 1990. But with merger volume off to a slow start this year, and the credit squeeze continuing to weigh on deal making activity, the research report said 2008 will likely see a year-over-year decline in M&A volume.

“At the close of last year when we put forth our 2008 predictions for the pace of M&A activity, our contention was that deal volume in terms of dollar proceeds would likely be flat from 2007 results ($1.49 trillion),” the Lab Thomson report said. “That forecast, while recognizing the slowdown in deal activity that started in third quarter 2007, was based in part on active participation by sovereign wealth funds, a flurry of consolidations in the financial sector and a rebound in private equity acquisitions during the course of 2008.”

However, using data pulled from the Securities Data Co. ’s Platinum merger database, the report found that first quarter 2008 deal volumes have “slumped significantly” from the year-ago period. “First quarter 2008 is poised to rank as the slowest quarter since the third quarter of 2004 and slowest first-quarter since 2003.”

As result, U.S. merger volumes are estimated to reach only about $1 trillion in 2008.

Still, Thomson Research said you shouldn’t take down all your party decorations, as merger activity may pick up later in the year. “Looking at the second half of 2008, an improving credit market along with a significant level of available funds for private equity to put to use will likely boost the environment for M&A gains,” the report said.