acquisitions

Corel has agreed to acquire Roxio from Rovi, consolidating companies from an earlier era in the software industry.

Corel sells graphics programs, including the new AfterShot Pro it obtained with the recent acquisition of Bibble Labs, and the WordPerfect Office line. To that it plans to add Roxio's products for tasks including burning DVDs, recording videos of video game play, encrypting USB drives, transferring VHS tapes to DVDs, and playing DVDs.

"On the digital media side, we will have a full-blown multimedia suite and a new offering on the Mac platform. For WinZip, we will be able to … Read more

Fab.com, a design-focused e-commerce site that's growing by leaps and bounds, acquired online independent fashion marketplace FashionStake for an undisclosed sum.

FashionStake carved out a niche for itself in the e-commerce world by allowing independent fashion designers to sell their goods on the site, rather than gambling on getting products into name-brand stores can be difficult to crack. According to FashionStake's Web site, it offers products from 240 designers in 16 countries around the world.

Fab.com was one of the more surprising Web standouts last year. Since launching its site in June 2011, the company has … Read more

Talk of Research In Motion being acquired just won't go away. But this time, it might be RIM's fault.

The BlackBerry maker has hired investment bank Goldman Sachs to help it field potential buyout offers, according to the rumor mill on the Wall Street trading floor. According to Reuters, one unidentified trader said yesterday that RIM is "up on Goldman," but cautioned that it doesn't mean a sale is coming anytime soon.

Even so, all that speculation was enough to see RIM's shares jump over 5 percent yesterday to settle at $16.44. It … Read more

The Alibaba Group is working on securing billions of dollars to aid the company in acquiring all or part of Yahoo, a new report claims.

Citing "people familiar with the matter," Bloomberg is reporting today that China's Alibaba is planning to take out a $3 billion loan for its Yahoo bid. Initially, the publication's sources says, the company was planning on a $4 billion loan.

For months now, rumors have suggested Alibaba is planning to make an acquisition bid for Yahoo. In September, the company's CEO, Jack Ma, told an audience at Stanford University that … Read more

Corel, a longtime maker of image-editing software, has acquired Bibble Labs and will introduce new software at CES based on Bibble's technology for processing raw photos from higher-end cameras.

Bibble President Jeff Stephens announced the acquisition and new software plan in a blog post Friday. Bibble Labs' latest product, Bibble 5.2.3, will be the last, and Stephens now is leading development of the new photo "workflow" software at Corel, he added.

Further details of the software aren't yet clear, but it sounds an awful lot like Adobe Systems' Lightroom and Apple's Aperture. Both … Read more

As Microsoft and Nokia were working out their Windows Phone 7 plans earlier this year, the companies were also considering a joint bid for Research In Motion, a new report claims.

Citing anonymous sources, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Microsoft and Nokia neared a joint bid for RIM "in recent months" before deciding against it. The Journal's sources also said that while RIM co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis won't necessarily turn their backs on any buyout offers, the executives are waiting until next year's launch of the company's new mobile … Read more

Apple has acquired Israel-based flash memory startup Anobit, a report claims.

The deal, according to Israel's Calcalist business news site (Google Translate), is in the $400 million to $500 million range. Earlier today, Anobit apparently informed its employees that Apple had made an offer that it had accepted and that they were on their way to being employed by the iPhone maker.

Today's report follows a claim made by Calcalist last week, saying that Apple and Anobit were nearing a deal.

Anobit's flash memory technology is found in Apple's iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. The startup … Read more

Here's an upbeat tidbit to end the year: 2011 is on track to the biggest year in venture capital deals in a decade.

Big years make for daring bets, and for this year I've chose a dozen influential investors to single out for their role in fueling startups of all sorts.

If the final quarter shapes up as it looks like it will, venture capital deals will total $30 billion for the year, a 25-percent jump from 2010, according to Anand Sanwal, whose firm, CB Insights, tracks investment activity among VCs and some big angel investors.

"I … Read more

Semiconductor equipment maker Lam Research has agreed to acquire rival Novellus Systems in an all-stock deal worth $3.3 billion, the companies announced today.

The combined venture is expected to benefit from the individual companies' complementary product capabilities, with Novellus' thin-film application technology aligning with Lam's business of etching the film to create features that define a chip's final use and function.

Under the agreement's terms Novellus stockholders will get 1.125 shares of Lam common stock for each Novellus share, a premium of about 28 percent higher than Novellus' $34.70 closing price Wednesday. When the … Read more