On Monday, B&G
Foods purchased Mrs. Dash and five other household brands from Unilever for $325 million in an all-cash deal. The consumer goods
giant has been recently selling several of the kitchen brands it
gained from last year’s takeover of Alberto Culver. The buyer was
up 8.3%, while the Unilever was down 1.5%. The following day, it was
announced that BB&T Corporation would pay $301 million for $5.4
billion in loans and deposits from BankAtlantic. The commercial
bank agreed to take only the best assets, leaving the seller with
millions in troubled loans. Despite the deal expanding BB&T’s
operations in the southeast, they fell 3.7% as BankAtlantic’s
parent was boosted a massive 111%. Also that day, web powerhouse Yahoo bought InterClick for $270 million in order to improve its
data targeting solutions for advertisers. The audience intelligence
firm grew by 21%, reflecting the large premium being paid, while
Yahoo closed 4.5% lower.
After hours on Thursday
saw Billionaire Carl Icahn disclose an increase in his WebMD stake
to 9.5%. Mr Icahn has been known to advise his companies to change
strategy in order to raise their share price. The health information
website was almost 1% higher the following day. On Friday, mining
firm Anglo American said that it had increased its stake in De
Beers to as much as 85% in exchange for $5.1 billion in cash. It has
been hinted that the Oppenheimer family relinquished control of the
company, which produces one third of the world’s diamonds, to
diversify their portfolio. Anglo American was up 1.4%. Also that day, Kirin Holdings acquired the remaining 49% stake in Brazilian brewer
Chincariol Participacoes e Representacoes following its purchase of a
51% stake in August. The deal was worth around $1.35 billion. They
hope that gaining full ownership will help them improve governance
and efficiency at Chincariol. The Japanese food and beverage firm
dropped 0.6%.
