Mergers & Acquisitions

New York-based flash-sales site Totsy is laying off its staff of 83 employees. The company, which had 110 employees last year and 4 million email subscribers, has entered liquidation, hiring the investment bank Consensus Advisors to sell off its assets, which includes the member list and $2 million worth of inventory. According to sale documents obtained by PandoDaily, the company hit $16.9 million in revenue last year and never turned a profit on its flash sales. It lost $22.9 million in 2012 and projects a loss of $16.8 million this year.

KKR & Co., the private equity firm run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, is weighing an investment in Saks and may seek a merger with rival Neiman Marcus, said people with knowledge of the matter. The deliberations may not lead to a transaction, said one of the people, who asked not to be named as the process is private. It wasn't immediately clear whether KKR had approached New York-based Saks. Merging the two would create an upscale department-store chain with more than $7 billion in annual sales

Tumblr — home of gifs, memes and NSFW photos — has joined the ranks of corporate America: The company has been bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion. Besides goofy cat videos and loads (seriously, loads) of pornographic material, Tumblr also hosts one of the most passionate, creative and irreverent fashion communities out there on the internet. So now the question is: How will that community, which so far has thrived on the free-for-all vibe that prevails at Tumblr, be affected by the new acquisition?

True Religion has agreed to be acquired by investment management firm TowerBrook Capital Partners in a deal worth about $835 million. TowerBrook will pay $32 per share in cash, representing a premium of about 9 percent to True Religion's closing price on May 9, 2013. The company's board unanimously approved the deal and recommended that shareholders vote in favor of the transaction, which is expected to close in the third quarter.

Foot Locker has started the ball rolling toward acquiring Runners Point Warenhandelsges, a specialty athletic store and online retailer based in Recklinghausen, Germany, for a total cash consideration of approximately $94 million. RPG is

Private equity firms TPG Capital and Warburg Pincus are exploring a sale or public offering of Neiman Marcus Group, according to a Bloomberg News report late on Sunday. The private equity firms, which bought the Dallas-based retailer in 2005 for $5.1 billion, have interviewed banks and are about to hire Credit Suisse Group AG to run the dual track process, according to the report, which cited two people familiar with the situation.

The candle manufacturer may be worth 10 times its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization  of around $200 million, the sources said, speaking on condition of

There's been a lot of buzz about who will make a bid for Barnes & Noble, with the current rumors including Wal-Mart and Microsoft. Both companies had kicked the tires in the past, and so it seems reasonable to expect they'd look again. But the real player in the space — and in some ways the most strategic buyer — would be Amazon.com, for a number of reasons that reflect the changing business of brick-and-mortar retail and Amazon's evolution.

The company, which was acquired by Chicago-based buyout firm Madison Dearborn Partners for $1.6 billion in 2006, is working with Barclays and Bank of America Merrill Lynch on a sale process that's still in the early stages, the people said. The people asked not to be named because the process isn't public. Representatives of Barclays and Bank of America declined to comment. Madison Dearborn didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hot Topic, the operator of more than 800 teen specialty-retail stores, agreed to be bought by private-equity firm Sycamore Partners for about $600 million. The agreement was unanimously approved by Hot Topic's board and will require shareholder and regulatory approval, the companies said today in a statement. The offer of $14 a share is 30 percent higher than Hot Topic's closing price yesterday.