Heal's the home furnishings retailer has accepted a £33m takeover offer from the Wittington investment company... [more]

Walker Greenbank has acquired Brushstrokes the Oxford-based manufacturer of stencils for the decorative trade for £0.25m and will transfer production to its site in Loughborough... [more]

Cordiant Communications and Publicis of France have agreed to merge their media buying operations which include Zenith Media and Publicis's Optimedia... [more]

HSBC Private Equity has sold Mira Showers the former Caradon division to Kohler of the US for £301m... [more]

Matalan is to acquire Lee Cooper the jeans manufacturer from Bridgepoint Capital for £45m... [more]

OneClickHR has acquired Parker Technologies the Stoke-based developer of workplace time recording solutions for up to £1.5m... [more]

Nord Anglia is to acquire Bright Horizons the operator of 10 day care nurseries in the south of England for £6m... [more]

Humber Growers has acquired tomato grower Van Heyningen Brothers for about £10m and the new group will have more than 1000 staff and trade as Humber VHB... [more]

Charnwood Group of Leicester has merged with Tubbs Group which has operations in Nottingham and Wiltshire to create a combined elastic manufacturing business called Stretchline with 500 staff... [more]

Tempus the owner of the CIA media buying agency has agreed to a £425m takeover offer from Havas Advertising of France... [more]

Innovation Group has acquired MTW the US supplier of insurance software for £59m... [more]

Royal & Sun Alliance is to acquire Seguros BBV Probursa the Mexican insurance company for £29m... [more]

Cakebread Robey the London-based builders merchant has been acquired by Jewson for £7.4m... [more]

Cordiant has acquired International Business Information the Japanese business communications consultancy for £7.5m... [more]

William Baird has sold its Baird Corporatewear subsidiary to Rainbow Corporate-wear for £11m in order to focus on womenswear and sportswear... [more]

Royal Bank of Scotland is to buy the US retail banking business of Pittsburgh-based Mellon Financial for £1.5bn funded by a £2bn share placing... [more]

Gartmore is to sell its passive equity fund management business to State Street Global Advisors for undisclosed terms in order to focus on its high margin active business... [more]

BP is to sell two US refineries in North Dakota and Utah to Tesoro Petroleum in a £480m deal that also includes pipelines storage and 45 service stations... [more]

Chubb is to acquire A-Link USA and Alarm Processing of Texas for £35m in order to expand its electronic alarm operations in the US. ... [more]

Screen is to acquire Pentyre the Hemel Hempstead-based software developer for up to £2m in order to expand its security and communication systems business... [more]