Mergers and acquisitions

The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 1430 GMT on Thursday:

** Commercial Metals Company <CMC.N> said it will acquire concrete supplier Foley Products Co for $1.84 billion in cash, as dealmaking accelerates across the U.S. building-products sector amid a push for scale and more local supply chains.

** South African food producer Premier Group <PMRJ.J> has agreed to acquire all the shares of RFG <RFGJ.J> through a share swap deal valued at about 5.7 billion rand ($329 million), in which RFG shareholders will take a 22.5% stake in the combined group.

** Crypto heavyweight Kraken said it has acquired futures exchange Small Exchange from IG Group for $100 million, paving the way to launch a fully U.S.-based derivatives suite.

** Bavarian Nordic <BAVA.CO> said on Wednesday a consortium led by Nordic Capital and Permira had raised its offer price for the vaccine maker to 250 Danish crowns ($39) per share after its initial bid was not accepted by a sufficient number of investors.

** Canal+ <CAN.L> said it had acquired a minority stake in French cinema operator and producer UGC, as the French broadcasting company reported a 1.2% organic rise in its nine-month group revenue.

** French telecom operator Orange <ORAN.PA> has increased its offer for the 50% it does not own in MasOrange to 4.8 billion euros ($5.6 billion), Spanish news website El Confidencial reported, citing unidentified market sources.

** Altice France, the owner of telecoms firm SFR, has rejected a bid from three French rivals, Altice CEO Arthur Dreyfuss told staff in a memo on Wednesday, dealing a blow to investor hopes for consolidation in the European telecoms market.

** Investment firm Ardian and Italian asset management company Finint Infrastrutture have signed an agreement to jointly acquire Milione Spa, the holding company that controls Save, operator of several airports, including Venice's Marco Polo.

** An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft and Nvidia is buying one of the world's biggest data center operators with nearly 80 facilities in a deal worth $40 billion to secure coveted computing capacity for artificial intelligence.

** A Brazilian energy company controlled by the owners of JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, said on Wednesday it had signed a deal to buy electric utility Eletrobras' stake in state-run Eletronuclear for 535 million reais ($98 million).

** Air taxi firm Archer Aviation <ACHR.N> on Wednesday said that it has won a bid to acquire rival Lilium's portfolio of about 300 advanced air mobility patent assets for 18 million euros ($20.91 million), expanding its own portfolio to over 1,000 patent assets.