Top deals of the day - bids, mergers and acquisitions

By VCPOST Staff Reporter

Dec 03, 2013 09:17 PM EST

The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported on tuesday including Adcock Ingram, Energa, Nordea Bank, Alitalia, Ben Venue, TIM Participacoes, Douglas, Mercator, Novartis, OncoMed, Kerning and Malaysia Airports.

Chernin Group on Monday acquired a majority stake in Crunchyroll, a San Francisco-based company that streams Japanese anime over the Internet, the New York Times reported. Terms of the deal were not announced, but a person briefed on the matter said the investment was worth a little less than $100 million. 

Malaysia-based Etiqa Insurance Bhd, a unit of Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank), is considering acquiring life insurer PT Asuransi Jiwa Mega Life, owned by PT Sinar Mas Multiartha and CT Corpora, the Investor Daily reported. Sinar Mas and CT Corpora plan to sell 80 percent shares in Mega Life worth between $200 million and $300 million. 

Retailer Kerning has received four offers for its loss-making La Reroute mail order unit and plans to hold a board meeting to choose a bidder on Wednesday, sources said. 

Oil producer QEP Resources Inc said on Monday it would spin off its pipeline business, bowing to pressure from activist hedge fund Jana Partners LLC. 

Calpine Corp said on Monday it will expand its fleet of power plants in Texas. The company will purchase the plant from MinnTex Power Holdings LLC, which is owned by a private investment fund managed by Wayzata Investment Partners LLC of Minnesota.  


Swiss drugmaker Novartis is ready to sell its animal health subsidiary and has opened its books to Bayer and other rivals interested in a business that could change hands for more than 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion), sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The board of South African drugmaker Adcock Ingram Holdings said it believed a $1.2 billion takeover bid from Chile's CFR Pharmaceuticals SA was still the best option for shareholders, rebuffing a rival offer from a local suitor. Meanwhile, South Africa's Bidvest has asked a high court to stop the takeover bid, alleging the planned financing of the offer is against the law.  

ATM maker NCR Corp said it would buy Digital Insight Corp, a provider of online and mobile banking technology, from private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC for $1.65 billion to boost its financial services business. 

Poland is expected to sell a stake in its fourth-biggest power company Energa for 17 zlotys per share, valuing the initial public offering at 2.4 billion zlotys ($774 million), sources familiar with the deal told Reuters on Tuesday. 

Apple Inc has acquired social media search and analytics startup Topsy, an unusual purchase for a hardware-focused company that has made few forays into social networking. 

Norway's Statoil ASA has purchased a 21 percent stake in its Mongstad refinery from Royal Dutch Shell and sold its 10 percent stake in the Pernis refinery in the Netherlands to Shell. 

Poland's biggest bank PKO BP has renewed a tender offer for Nordea Bank Polska, a local unit of Sweden's Nordea Bank, to give regulators more time to approve the acquisition, PKO BP said on Tuesday. 

An Indian ministerial panel on Tuesday approved a plan to impose a fee on telecoms carriers for mobile phone spectrum acquired via a merger with a rival, a senior government official said, a move that could hinder consolidation in the country's crowded telecoms sector. 

British media and education group Pearson Plc has agreed to buy Grupo Multi, the largest provider of adult English language training in Brazil, to strengthen its presence in the fast-growing Latin American country, it said on Tuesday. The owner of the Financial Times newspaper will pay 440 million pounds ($720 million) in cash and will take on 65 million pounds of debt from the Martins family and investment firm Kinea. 

Ryanair has not offered to take part in Italian airline Alitalia's poorly received 300 million euro ($407 million) capital increase, the chief executive of the Irish budget carrier said on Tuesday. 

Shares of OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc more than doubled on Tuesday after the biotechnology company said Celgene Corp would help it develop and market six of its experimental anti-cancer stem cell drugs. OncoMed will get upfront payments of $177.25 million, including $22.25 million for new stock that would give Celgene a stake of about 5 percent, the companies said. 

Italian renewable energy group Falck Renewables SpA said it had agreed to sell a 49 percent stake in its British wind farm projects to the Copenhagen Infrastructure fund for around 153 million pounds. 

Ben Venue Laboratories, a Bedford, Ohio-based subsidiary of German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim, has tapped Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore a possible sale of its generic sterile injectable drugs business. 

Israel Discount Bank Ltd's two controlling shareholders have sold a 7 percent stake for 493 million shekels ($140 million), the bank said, the beginning of a phased sell-off of their 25-percent holding. 

Telecom Italia is not carrying out any formal or informal process at the moment to sell its Brazilian affiliate TIM Participacoes, TIM's Chief Executive Rodrigo Abreu said. 

Kenya's Centum Investment Co has offered to buy sisal producer Rea Vipingo Plantations Ltd for around 3 billion shillings ($34.6 million), topping a rival bid from Rea Vipingo's main shareholder, Rea Trading. 

Kuwaiti telecom company Zain said it would not enter negotiations to buy Sudanese fixed-line operator Canar. 

German beauty-to-books retailer Douglas is preparing to divest its Hussel confectionary stores, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. 

Shares in Slovenia's largest food retailer Mercator fell to their lowest since 1999 on Tuesday over growing concern that a takeover bid by Croatia's Agrokor could fail. 

Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd and Turkey's TAV Havalimanlari Holding are in talks with India's GMR Infrastructure Ltd about buying its 40 percent stake in Turkey's Sabiha Gokcen Airport, sources close to the negotiations said.  

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