Some pundits had their doubts when Citigroup Inc. announced it was laying off 50,000 workers but the U.S. government announced this week it would buy $20 billion worth of preferred shares.

The U.S. Treasury Department, along with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, also said they would "provide protection against the possibility of unusually large losses on an asset pool of approximately $306 billion of loans and securities backed by residential and commercial real estate and other such assets ..."

The announcement was part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which was started in October. TARP was a by-product of the U.S. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which was initially intended to give the government authority to buy mortgages but then expanded into a program to buy bank shares.

Despite news that auditor KPMG is uncertain about BCE's solvency, a Toronto-based analyst says this doesn't mean the deal will not go through.

"There's still strong interest in getting the deal done, " said Eamon Hoey, senior partner at Toronto-based telecom consultancy Hoey Associates.