Mergers & Acquisitions

shopkick announced its first supermarket chain partnership, penning a deal with Giant Eagle to bring activity from the loyalty app into the retailer's 228 stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. 

Jones Group is considering a sale of its denim business. The company, whose brands include Nine West and Anne Klein, said Oct. 11 that it's in talks with clothing maker Delta Galil Industries to sell its jeanswear division for about $350 million to $400 million. Jones expects talks to be completed by the end of the month, but said a deal hasn't been reached and a transaction isn't guaranteed.

<span class="articleLocation">A.C. Moore has agreed to be bought by an affiliate of privately held larger rival Sbar's for about $40.8 million in cash. The Sbar's affiliate will pay $1.60 for each A.C. Moore share, a 68 percent premium. A.C. Moore, which also withdrew its outlook, said the Sbar's affiliate received a financing commitment from Wells Fargo to provide debt financing for the deal.

Online music service Rhapsody announced that it's purchased Napster from Best Buy. Rhapsody didn't disclose the price it paid for Napster, which Best Buy acquired in 2008 for $121 million in a bid to break into the online music subscription space.

Billabong announced that it moved to 100 percent control of the Sydney-based retailer Surfection, a business previously operated under a joint venture between the Billabong Group and interests associated with retailer Chris Athas.

Starting in 2005, Borders began amassing a database of more than 48 million email addresses of customers who participated in its loyalty program. Now that the company is in bankruptcy, that email database is seen as valuable property by Barnes & Noble, which won an auction to purchase Borders’ assets for $13.9 million. The problem for Barnes & Noble is that Borders originally promised many of the customers in its loyalty program that it wouldn't disclose their personal information without their permission. Borders changed its policy in May 2008, but collected millions of email addresses and other data before then.

Online home goods giant Wayfair (formerly CSN Stores) today announced that it's acquired Australian online home goods retailer Buyster.com.au. Wayfair already owned 50 percent of the company, but has now purchased the remaining 50 percent stake from technology investment firm, Netus.

After conquering online retail in diapers, soaps, beauty products and most recently pet supplies, Amazon-owned Quidsi is moving into its next vertical — toys. Quidsi is debuting YoYo.com, a toy e-commerce site that aims to provide recommendations and discovery tools to make kids toy shopping easy and fun.

Wal-Mart has acquired OneRiot, a mobile and social ad targeting startup, to join Wal-Mart Labs. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

At a special meeting held Sept. 10, BJ's Wholesale Club stockholders approved the definitive agreement between the company and Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners to be acquired in a cash transaction valued at about $2.8 billion.