VENTURE CAPITAL POST

National Australia Bank (NAB.AX) is considering the sale of its life insurance unit worth an estimated $800 million, seeking to boost earnings and returns on capital, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The U.S. dollar held near a six-year peak against the yen early on Thursday and powered to a seven-month high on its New Zealand peer, which fell after the country's central bank said its current level is "unjustified and unsustainable".

Global Cash Access Holdings Inc (GCA.N), which provides cash services to casinos, said it would buy slot machine maker Multimedia Games Holding Co Inc (MGAM.O) for about $1.2 billion to strengthen its gaming business.

Australia said on Friday it will sell health insurer Medibank Private in an initial public offering in December, in a sale expected to fetch about A$4 billion ($3.74 billion) and make 2014 the country's biggest year of new listings.

Commodities trader and miner Glencore (GLEN.L) and Chinese nickel producer Jinchuan Group are the frontrunners to buy BHP Billiton's (BHP.AX)(BLT.L) Australian Nickel West division, two sources close to the situation said.

Alison Hardacre, co-founder and managing director of HealthKit, a Melbourne-based startup and owner of both the HealthKit Twitter handle and the healthkit.com website expressed disappointment over Twitter on Apple's use of its company name in its new product.

Finding new smartphone and tablet apps is getting easier, thanks to new apps designed to help people discover still more apps.

Perth, Australia-based publicly listed firm Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Ltd secured $49.5 million in a placement of 90 million shares to its Australian and new US investors at $0.55 apiece for development of its Magnolia LNG facility.

Mining tycoon Andrew Forrest acquired Perth, Western Australia-based beef processor and exporter Harvey Beef for an undisclosed amount through his company Minderoo, and announced expansion plans for the newly-acquired firm.

Elance-oDesk has launched in Australia after seeing the country with much potential for industry growth basing on its recorded adjustment per capita of 235 percent increase in online hiring.

FIH, a handset manufacturing service provider of Foxconn, poured $2.2 million into Singaporean social media site mig33 to help the latter preload its apps into tens of millions of mobile phones every month.

Melbourne, Australia-based payments startup Aston Club took home $1.5 million in its seed funding round led by Chris Morris of Computershare to launch a mobile app that helps users pay their bar and restaurant bills.

Caving in to public pressure, San Francisco, US-based marketing automation firm RadiumOne terminated its chief executive officer (CEO) Gurbaksh Chahal after he pled guilty to domestic violence and battery charges recently filed against him.

New Zealand-based customer relationship management (CRM) software startup MyWave bagged NZ$2.5 million in an oversubscribed first funding round to develop its product and customer base before its 2015 listing on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.

Seoul, South Korea-based content recognition tech firm Enswers scored $2 million in a recent funding round from Samsung Ventures to boost its expansion campaign across the US and North America.