Mergers & Acquisitions

BP Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, will buy Brazilian, Azeri, and Gulf of Mexico assets from Devon Energy for a total cost of $7 billion, the company announced Thursday.

U.S. stocks rose on Monday after American International Group Inc. announced the sale of its unit Alico along with Sprint Nextel Corp to MetLife Inc. for $15.5 billion. The deal was made to augment revenue growth in the coming quarters.

Investment firm Elliott Associates LP offered to buy the business of Novell Inc. for $2 billion on Tuesday. Shares of Novell jumped 28 percent after the news.

In a move to turnaround its struggling Opel and Vauxhall units, General Motors (GM) said Tuesday that it would triple the funding in these units.

American International Group Inc. (AIG) sold its Asian life insurance business to Prudential PLC of Britain on Monday. The deal was inked for $35.5 billion and is reportedly the largest insurance takeover so far.

Kettle Food Inc. will soon be acquired by Diamond Foods for $615 million. The latter is the seller of Emerald nuts and Pop Secret popcorn.

Coca-Cola Co., the world’s largest beverage company, is in talks to buy North American operations of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.

Yahoo and Microsoft announced their plans to implement the 10-year agreement, under which Microsoft's technology will power Yahoo search and the two companies will share revenue generated by the site. The European Commission said Thursday that the deal would not harm the consumers.