SAB turn to Foster’s
South Africa’s hugely acquisitive SABMiller, world’s second-largest brewer with brands such as Peroni and Grolsch in its portfolio, snapped up Australian beer group Foster’s in September for £6.53bn ($10.22bn), albeit 10 percent more than it wanted to pay. “Good call”, as the Foster’s ads say.

Alpha bank Euro
The embattled Greek government heaved a sigh of relief when Alpha Bank and Eurobank EFG agreed to merge in August. Not only did it create an institution with €150bn ($216bn) in assets, it paved the way for similar exercises that should strengthen a beaten-up financial sector. The Athens stock market jumped 15 percent.

China seeks Daylight
China’s voracious appetite for energy assets saw a division of petro-chemical group Sinopec agree a $2.1bn all-cash purchase of Canada’s Daylight Energy in October.

Latin American drugs
In a rare Spanish takeover of a US company, family-controlled pharmaceutical group Grifols bought plasma specialist Talecris for $3.4bn in August.

Gates’ blue Skype thinking
Microsoft’s high-priced $8.5bn acquisition of Luxembourg-based Skype got the green light in October from the European Commission. However most analysts think Bill Gates’ old firm paid far too much.

VW keeps on trucking
In the latest step by Volkswagen boss Ferdinand Piech to topple Toyota as the world’s no. 1 automobile manufacturer, the group won official approval in late September to buy Munich-based truck-manufacturer MAN for $16.5bn.

Acer opens the valley
High-tech Singapore invaded Silicon Valley when the Acer computer group paid $395m for California’s iGware, a specialist in cloud technology, earlier this year.

Pushy texts
The mega-merger that may not happen is the $39bn one between cellphone giants AT&T and T-Mobile USA. The parties reached agreement but the US justice department has sued to block it on anti-competitive grounds.

Murdoch gagged
And the one that won’t happen, at least for a while, is Murdoch-controlled News International’s minimum £12bn ($18.76bn) bid for complete control of UK-based satellite channel group BSkyB. The bid was withdrawn following general outrage after some of Murdoch’s British journalists hacked into the phones of celebrities and politicians.

Wal-Mart goes local
And back in South Africa, retail giant Wal-Mart’s $2.4bn takeover of local supermarket chain Massmart finally overcame union and government fears of a flood of cheap imports. In a compromise deal the big American agreed not to fire workers for two years and to foster local suppliers.