There were a number of big M&A deals this week, with Staples announcing its $6.3 billion acquisition of Office Depot and Smucker’s getting set to pay $5.8 billion for Big Heart Pet Brands. Meanwhile, the tech industry was not left out.
GrubHub, the Chicago-based, smartphone-enabled food delivery service, will pay $80 million for two start-ups, DiningIn and Restaurants on the Run, as it looks to add delivery into its service offering. In rolling out a delivery fleet of its own (trials have already begun in Chicago, San Francisco, and LA), GrubHub does not plan to increase the 14% margin it currently charges partnering restaurants, which to this point have had to handle delivery themselves.
Microsoft has acquired Sunrise, New York, NY-based makers of a calendar app that works across platforms and devices. The deal is rumored to be worth $100 million. Sunrise will continue to operate as a standalone service after the acquisition.
UnderArmour has acquired MyFitnessPal, a ten year old mobile fist health and wellness tracker backed by Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins, for a reported $475 million. The sports apparel and equipment maker also spent around $85 million to acquire Endomondo, a Danish fitness social network.
BT will pay £12.5 billion to acquire British mobile operator EE from fellow European telecoms Orange and Deutsche Telekom and pending a review by the UK’s anti-trust authorities. The deal would give BT the ability to bundle landline, broadband, mobile, and television services. Deutsche Telekom would retain a 12% stake, while Orange would hold on to 4%.
San Francisco, Calif. private equity firm Hellman & Friedman is in talks to take over Auto Trader, a U.K.-based online car marketplace, for around £2 billion. Currently owned by another PE firm, Apax, Auto Trader is also believed to be considering a March IPO, having retained Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank for that purpose. Auto Trader was valued at £1.75 billion last January, when Apax bought out Guardian Media Group for a full controlling interest in the company. Hellman & Friedman raised an $11 billion fund last year.
Intel has purchased Lantiq, a German chipmaker owned by Golden Gate Capital. “Intel and Lantiq share a common vision about the evolution of the connected home and the intelligent network,” said Lantiq CEO Dan Artsui in a press release. “Together we can drive the transformation of the broadband customer premises equipment (CPE) as it becomes a smart gateway that connects an increasingly diverse roster of devices and services in the home.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
High-flying enterprise software collaboration tool company Slack has acquired ScreenHero, a fellow Y Combinator graduate. ScreenHero facilitates screen sharing on any application. Slack, the product of Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield, has raised $180 million. ScreenHero is its second acquisition in six months.
The U.K.’s Daily Mail acquired Elite Daily, a three year old digital media start-up founded by students at New York’s Pace University, for between $40 and $50 million in cash. The deal was announced at the end of last week, which also saw Business Insider and Mashable raise big rounds of venture financing.
The ninety-four year old consumer electronics retailer RadioShack is set to declare bankruptcy, and Amazon and Sprint are reportedly among those interested in scooping up and repurposing some of its 4,000 stores. The rumors come amidst RadioShack’s delisting on the New York Stock Exchange after it fell below the minimum $50 million market capitalization threshold.