Mergers and Acquisitions Recap: BP Considers BG Group BUY, AstraZeneca FINALIZES Ardea Purchase

Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A) Lubrizol is acquiring the skincare products maker Lipotec in a transaction for which the financials were not divulged. Following completion of the purchase, Lipotec will be integrated with Lubrizol’s advanced materials business.

AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) finalizes its $1.26 billion purchase of Ardea Biosciences (NASDAQ:RDEA), a firm that develops two potential drugs for gout and one for cancer.

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BP (NYSE:BP) might well explore the potential benefits that an acquisition of the gas-focused energy and petroleum company BG Group (BRGYY.PK) could bring, says an analyst for Reuters. BG is said to have many projects to pursue, but insufficient cash, which could be a perfect fit for BP, with lots of money that needs to be placed where it can work effectively.

Rackspace (NYSE:RAX) is currently second behind Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) in the increasingly rivalrous market for cloud infrastructure services, and forecasts by Gartner have it that the market could grow from $3.7 billion in 2010 to $10.5 billion by 2014. All this might be prompting Bloomberg to report that RAX is becoming a ‘compelling M&A target’, although it won’t be inexpensive with a market cap of $6 billion, plus the fact that it says it’s not for sale.

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