Bryan Matthews

Thyssenkrupp buys Nashville.     Thyssenkrupp buys Nashville Machine Elevator.     Nashville Machine Company began servicing and installing elevators 100 years ago. It's now the largest full-service elevator firm in the Middle Tennessee area.     Steve Wedge of Thyssenkrupp said: ‘As one of our most trusted distributors, Nashville Machine Elevator has consistently demonstrated ability and commitment to Thyssenkrupp and our latest products and technology. Their strong relationships in the Nashville area coupled with excellent service, modernization, and a new installation base makes Nashville Machine and its hard-working employees a perfect fit in the growing Thyssenkrupp family.’     Sam Chitty of NME said: ‘Today is an exciting day for Nashville Machine Elevator, joining a highly respected global elevator leader that is deeply committed to the industry and the people they serve. Since the 1920s, we have prided ourselves on providi...

Canadian Natural buys Devon.     Canadian Natural Resources buys the Canada assets of Devon Energy for $2.8 billion.     The deal, for Devon’s Jackfish oil sands project, heavy oil assets, 735 employees, and 1.5 million acres, firms up CNR’s position as the country’s biggest oil and gas producer.     Tim McKay of Canadian Natural said the assets give the company new opportunities to add value and deliver further balance to their production profile.  ‘These high-quality assets complement our existing asset base and give further balance to our production profile, while not increasing the need for incremental market access out of western Canada, as it's existing production.  The assets give us the opportunity to add value through synergies, including facility consolidation and operating and marketing efficiency opportunities, with targeted benefits of C$135 million on an annualized basis.  Through economies of scale, as well as complementa...

Investcorp buys Mercury.     Alternative-assets manager Investcorp buys placement agent and advisory firm Mercury Capital Advisors Group.     Mercury has broad experience providing advisory services on direct deals and co-investments, joint ventures, and secondary transactions, as well as consulting for general partners.     Mohammed Alardhi of Investcorp said: ‘Our partnership with Mercury is in line with Investcorp’s long-term strategy and our mission to serve investors worldwide with an array of attractive opportunities in alternative investments. Mercury is well positioned to deliver unique solutions to clients across the globe through its traditional placement capabilities.’     Michael Ricciardi of Mercury said: ‘This partnership is a powerful endorsement of Mercury’s unrelenting commitment both to excellence and to our clients. We have known the Investcorp team for years and believe they are the right partners with wh...

Merck buys Peloton.     Merck buys Peloton Therapeutics for $1.05 billion.     Peloton's molecular therapy biotech treatments for patients with cancer and other non-oncology diseases are now in clinical trials.  Peloton is focused on developing treatments that target a pathway activated by low oxygen levels.     This deal builds out the Merck oncology pipeline, strengthening its presence in the field of renal cell carcinoma.  Merck’s blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda, that helps turn the immune system against cancer cells, was approved last month in the United States.     Peloton will begin studying its lead drug, a kidney cancer treatment with the catchy code name PT2977, in a late-stage trial in the second half of 2019.  In earlier mid-stage trials, testing patients whose cancer had spread even after treatment with at least one therapy, 24% of patients treated with Peloton’s drug showed a 30% shrinkage of targeted lesions...

HPE buys Cray.     Hewlett Packard Enterprise buys Cray for $1.3 billion.     The deal opens out HPE’s reach with enterprise, government, and academic buyers of high-performance computing systems.  The company has a natural ability to speed up commercial supercomputing adoption.  It will also lower the cost of Cray's technology such as Slingshot, a high-speed network linking computing nodes into one big supercomputer.     Cray’s systems handle massive data sets, converged modeling, simulation, artificial intelligence, and analytics workloads.  Besides supercomputers, Cray offers high-performance storage, low-latency high-performance HPC interconnects, a full HPC system software stack and programming environment, data analytics, and artificial intelligence solutions – all integrated.     Cray has a $600 million Exascale contract with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the world’s fastest supercomputer.  The system wil...

Sisense buys Periscope Data.     Sisense offers a business intelligence platform that allows you to turn your data into interactive visualizations. You don’t need profound analytics savoir-faire to use it. The software mashes up disparate data sets, building and embedding apps and intuitive data exploration.     Periscope Data offers an analytics platform with predictive modeling and data science for the cloud. The software builds out broad data integration features that give you the power to blend information from multiple sources into a single dashboard.      The merger foresees a change of business. Where all enterprises, whatever industry, product, or service, will be data-driven. The plan is to combine offerings in an end-to-end analytics platform, helping both regular business users and specialists. Sisense ’s current product will be the platform’s foundation. Stack extension comes from Periscope Data’s integration features, co...

Froneri buys Tip Top.     Froneri buys Tip Top from Fonterra for $250 million.     Tip Top is New Zealand’s favorite ice cream.  Froneri is a joint venture between PAI Partners and Nestle.     Ibrahim Najafi of Froneri said: ‘We have always admired Tip Top, which is an iconic brand in New Zealand with a long proud history, and we are looking forward to welcoming the team into Froneri.  Our vision is to build the world’s best ice cream company.  An important part of our strategy is to develop local market successes and roll them out across our other markets.     Our customers are at the heart of our business, and we intend to invest in the Tip Top brands, products, and manufacturing facility to make sure we continue to excite the market and New Zealanders with delicious high-quality ice cream made from fresh New Zealand milk and cream.’  Kim Ballinger of Tip Top said: ‘As part of the Froneri family we will enjoy Fro...