US Airways seeking to purchase Delta

US Airways has just announced this morning that it would make an $8 billion bid (with cash and stock) for Delta Air Lines once the latter emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Delta creditors would get about $4 billion cash and and 78.5 million shares of US Airways stock which, based on yesterday's closing stock price, has a combined value of about $4 billion.

There isn’t much information available at this time, since the story was just released about an hour ago, but US Airways said that the deal would ‘generate $1.65 billion in annual synergies’. The combined airline would use the name of Delta, which according to US Airways' CEO, has a slightly higher brand awareness.