Business news with words agreed+close+deal. 41 news.

Merrill Lynch's sale of two life-insurance units to Dutch insurance and investment-products provider Aegon has closed, with the $1.25 billion pricetag being $50 million less than the two parties agreed to in August.

DELEK Real Estate Ltd, the Israeli company that backed out of a US$2.9-billion deal with Jelmoli AG, has agreed to buy 12 Frankfurt-area supermarkets from Metro AG, Germany's biggest retailer, for 243 million euros (US$349 million), Bloomberg News reported on Sunday. Delek, through its Delek Global Real Estate unit, will acquire the buildings from the Real supermarket chain, a subsidiary of Metro, the Netanya, Israel-based company said in an e-mailed statement to the stock exchange. Real will rent 10 of the supermarkets from Delek through 2022, and the other two through 2020, beginning at 16 million euros annually for all the properties. The rent will increase 6.7 percent every five years. "DGRE has again purchased a property with a quality tenant for a long period in a central area, and proved that even in these times it can use its connections to close deals and get good financing," Chief Executive Officer Ilik Rozanski said in the statement. Delek Real Estate, a

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- W&T Offshore Inc. agreed to acquire the interest it doesn't own in Ship Shoal 349 field, located offshore Louisiana and covering two federal lease blocks, for $116 million from Apache Corp. W&T and Apache, both Houston energy companies, expect to close the deal by April 30. W&T said in a Monday statement that it would finance the deal from cash on hand.

Update: Bain and TPG announced they will acquire One Equity’s stake in Quintiles for an undisclosed amount. The deal is expected to close next month, and the company will incur no new debt from the sale. Bain Capital and TPG Capital have agreed to buy Quintiles Transnational, one of the biggest managers of drug trials, for [...]

Petrohawk Energy has agreed to purchase 3,000 acres in the Elm Grove Field of northern Louisiana for $169 million, the Houston-based company said today. The deal is expected to close by the end of next month, the company said in a release.

Midwest Air Group Inc. said Friday is has agreed to give antitrust regulators until Jan. 31 to complete their review of its proposed $450 million sale to a private equity group and won't close the deal before then without their approval.

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- H&R Block Inc. said Tuesday it has agreed to terminate a previous agreement under which Cerberus Capital Management would have acquired its Option One Mortgage Corp. unit. The tax-services provider said it will close all remaining origination activities of Option One and has stopped accepting new loan applications. H&R Block said the move will result in 620 staff cuts, the closure of three offices and a pretax restructuring charge of about $75 million. The company said it continues to pursue the sale of its loan-servicing activities.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- International Speedway Corp. said late Friday that Prologis terminated its agreement to buy the company's Staten Island, N.Y., property effective Nov. 27. The Daytona Beach, Fla., motorsports activities promoter said Prologis, a real estate investment trust, terminated the agreement before the expiration of the due diligence inspection period. Prologis agreed to buy the 676-acre property on Oct. 19, and the deal was expected to close in December.

The pending merger between Transocean and GlobalSantaFe received the OK Monday from regulators in the United Kingdom after the offshore drillers agreed to sell GlobalSantaFe's floating rigs in the North Sea. The settlement resolves the last remaining obstacle to the blockbuster merger and puts the Houston-based companies on course to close the deal by today as planned.

Muddled expectations and mismanaged diplomacy may mean that the Annapolis peace summit achieves far less than its backers once hoped WHAT many dreamed would be a gilded carriage carrying the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to a grand ball of peacemaking has turned back into a pumpkin before their eyes. A firm date of November 27th for the "international meeting" in Annapolis, Maryland, was set only a week before the event itself, and as this article went to press talks were continuing over the content and which Arab states would attend. Despite increasingly frantic shuttle diplomacy, Condoleezza Rice, George Bush's secretary of state, could not close the gap between the Israeli and Palestinian positions, forcing her to accept little more than the "photo-op" meeting that she had promised Annapolis would not become. One reason was simple: the gulf between Israel and the Palestinians is indeed wide. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, wanted Annapolis to pin down some of the "core issues" of the two-state peace deal agreed at the non-binding 2001 Taba talks; issues such as the overall quantity (if not the exact borders) of the land Israel would relinquish for a Palestinian state. He also wanted a firm, six-month deadline for completing peace talks. Ms Rice too wanted some sort of commitments. Israel, on the other hand, wanted them left vague. In private, its officials argued that Mr Abbas and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, were so politically weak at home that if they made promises they could not keep, opponents would seize on the chance to undermine both them and the peace process. ...

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Cerberus, the New York private-equity firm, late on Wednesday said it asked a New York State Supreme Court, a trial court, for a judgment against United Rentals Inc. Cerberus claims that it is not obligated to complete its acquisition of the Greenwich, Conn., equipment-rental company and that under their agreement, URI is entitled only to damages. On Monday, URI said that it sued Cerberus in the Delaware Court of Chancery to compel the investment firm to close the acquisition. Cerberus had agreed to pay $34.50 a share, or $7 billion, for United Rentals. Cerberus said on Wednesday that its agreement with URI includes a liability cap of $100 million if the deal did not go through. United Rentals has said that Cerberus's effort to end the deal is a ploy to lower the deal price.

Providence Equity Partners Inc. may back out of a $1.2 billion agreement to acquire Clear Channel Communications' 56 television stations. Providence is the financial backer for Newport Television, a company formed by former Wichita television executive Sandy DiPasquale. Newport is operating out of Wichita offices pending its planned December move to Kansas City. DiPasquale is recuperating from an illness and could not be reached for comment Tuesday. His son, Michael, didn't return calls to the Wichita office. Other company officials declined comment. Providence may not close the deal on the terms agreed upon in April, San Antonio-based Clear Channel said Nov. 9 in a regulatory filing. The sale outcome doesn't threaten Clear Channel's pending $19.5 billion takeover by Thomas H. Lee Partners Inc. and Bain Capital LLC, the company said.

OLYMPUS Corp, the world's largest maker of surgical cameras, has agreed to buy Gyrus Group Plc for about 935 million pounds (US$1.9 billion). The aim is to expand its most profitable business, Bloomberg News reported. Olympus offered 630 pence in cash for each share of Wokingham, England-based Gyrus, or 58 percent more than the stock's close on Friday, the two companies said in a statement yesterday. Shares of Gyrus soared 57 percent in London trading. The purchase would add scalpels and tools for sealing blood vessels to the Tokyo-based company's lineup of medical equipment, its largest division by revenue. Olympus earlier this month raised its annual profit forecast for a second time, citing sales of digital cameras and endoscopes that examine internal organs. The acquisition would place the companies to "benefit from the continuing shift toward minimally invasive surgical procedures," the statement said. Olympus's medical division posted sales of 168.2 billion

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Ralcorp Holdings Inc. Thursday said Thursday that it agreed to acquire the Post cereals business of Kraft Foods Inc. , paying about $1.6 billion in stock for the business. Kraft will distribute ownership of Post to its shareholders in either a split-off or spin-off transaction, to be determined upon closing of the deal. Either way, Kraft shareholders will own about 54% of Ralcorp, with current Ralcorp shareholders owning the rest. The deal also includes the assumption of nearly $950 million in debt. The sale, expected to close in mid-2008, is expected to cut Kraft's annual earnings by 13 cents a share. The Post cereals business, which includes Raisin Bran, Grape-Nuts and a variety of Pebbles children's cereals, is the No. 3 U.S. cereal maker by sales after Kellogg Co. and General Mills Inc. , with net revenue of about $1.1 billion in 2006.

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- United Stationers Inc., the Deerfield, Ill., business-products distributor, definitively agreed to pay $180 million cash for ORS Nasco Holding Inc., the Muskogee, Okla., wholesale distributor of industrial supplies. The sellers are an affiliate of Brazos Private Equity Partners LLC of Dallas and other holders. ORS Nasco has annual sales of about $285 million, United Stationers said in a statement on Thursday. The deal gives USTR entry into the market for wholesale industrial supplies, and it complements the company's Lagasse business, United Stationers President and Chief Executive Richard Gochnauer said in the statement. ORS Nasco should add to earnings beginning in 2008, United Stationers said. USTR hopes to close the deal in 2007, subject to conditions including antitrust approval clearance.

REXEL SA, the world's largest distributor of electrical equipment, agreed to buy Hagemeyer NV after raising its offer to 3.1 billion euros (US$4.5 billion) to expand in the United Kingdom and Germany. Rexel will sell parts of Hagemeyer to competitor Sonepar SA, which has agreed to tender its 10.49 percent holding, Naarden, the Netherlands-based Hagemeyer and Paris-based Rexel said yesterday, according to Bloomberg News. The sweetened 4.85 euros-a-share bid is 68 percent higher than Hagemeyer's September 27 close, before takeover speculation began. A deal would expand Rexel's revenue about 3.6 billion euros, or 40 percent, giving it greater power to negotiate prices with its suppliers. Rexel and Sonepar, which also bid for Hagemeyer, buys switches, cables and plugs from electrical equipment makers such as Schneider Electric SA and sells them on to builders or industrial customers including BASF AG and Siemens AG.

FORD workers are expected to vote this week on a landmark contract with the United Auto Workers that should help the ailing auto maker by lowering wages for thousands of new workers and moving Ford's retiree health care obligations to a union-run trust. In exchange for the wage cuts and other concessions, the auto maker promised not to close any US plants beyond those it has already identified. It also promised future products to six US assembly plants and agreed to make hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of improvements to plants. Some analysts question whether the four-year deal is enough to help Ford, which lost more than US$12 billion last year and has mortgaged its assets - including its blue oval logo - to fund a turnaround. If Ford's US market share keeps falling, the company might have to go back to the UAW and ask for more, said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. "They're in a very rocky position right now," he said.

Dutch financial services group ING has agreed to buy ShareBuilder’s online brokerage business for $220 million to extend its reach in the United States, ING said on Tuesday. ShareBuilder, a privately held brokerage based in Seattle, will be added to ING’s online banking arm ING Direct in a deal that is expected to close by the [...]

THE United Auto Workers union has reached a tentative contract agreement with Ford Motor Co, the last of the big three US car makers participating in a historic round of negotiations that has slashed wages and changed the way health care is provided to retirees. Ford said the deal, if approved by a majority of the 54,000 workers represented, will make it more competitive as it tries to halt its sliding US market share. Tentative agreement on Ford's four-year contract was reached about 3:20am on Saturday without a strike. The UAW held short strikes against General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC before reaching agreements with those automakers. Details were not immediately released but a person briefed on the deal said Ford scaled back plans to close some US plants and has promised to make significant product investments to ensure those plants will remain open for now. In exchange, Ford will be allowed to pay lower wages to thousands of new hires, a provision already agreed to in

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Canetic Resources Trust , rose 3.3% to $16.03 on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday after it agreed to be bought for about $3.8 billion in stock by Penn West Energy Trust , . "The combination will form the largest conventional oil and gas trust in North America and create a world-class Canadian platform to compete against global energy companies and deliver superior unitholder returns," the companies said. Shares of Penn West fell 2.3% to $31.48 in morning action on the NYSE. The merger will require a two-thirds majority vote by shareholders. The deal is expected to close in January.