• Natick, Massachusetts-based Boston Scientific is delaying its $27 billion acquisition of Guidant Corp. until the week of April 3. The deal, announced January 25 after a lengthy bidding war between Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson, had been scheduled to close at the end of March.
• Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway completed its acquisition of BusinessWire, a distributor of corporate news, multimedia, and regulatory filings. Financial terms of the transaction, announced on January 17, were not disclosed. BusinessWire, based in San Francisco, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.
• Stamford, Connecticut-based Thomson Corp., a provider of business information and analysis, acquired Quantitative Analytics Inc., which provides database integration and analysis solutions to the financial services industry. Quantitative Analytics is now a part of Thomson’s Corporate Services, Investment Banking, and Investment Management group.
• Cupertino, California-based network security specialist Symantec Corp. acquired Relicore Inc., a provider of data-center change and configuration management solutions. The acquisition, a step in Symantec’s effort to build an integrated solution for standardized, simplified data center management, was announced February 7.
• Irvine, California-based Broadcom Corp., a semiconductor builder for communications, completed its acquisition of Sandburst Corp. for approximately $77 million. The agreement to buy Andover, Massachusetts-based Sandburst, a privately held fabless semiconductor company, was announced January 23.
• Houston-based energy company Southern Union Co. acquired the Sid Richardson Energy Services business, which will be renamed Southern Union Gas Services. The $1.6 billion acquisition was funded through a bridge loan, which the company expects to retire with proceeds from various asset dispositions and debt or equity. To help finance the deal, Southern Union earlier announced plans to sell its PG Energy distribution division in Pennsylvania to UGI Corp. for $580 million and the Rhode Island assets of its New England Gas Co. division to National Grid USA for $575 million, less assumed debt of $77 million. Both those sales are expected to close by the end of the third quarter.
• Chicago-based investment research firm Morningstar Inc. completed its acquisition of Ibbotson Associates, a provider of asset allocation research and services. The purchase price, about $83 million in cash, is subject to adjustments for working capital and other items. Morningstar also expects to realize approximately $10 million in tax benefits in 2006 related to payment for the cancellation of Ibbotson’s stock options.
• The shareholders of Neoforma Inc., a San Jose, California-based medical supply-chain management company, approved the merger of Neoforma, Global Healthcare Exchange LLC, and Leapfrog Merger Corp. Leapfrog will be merged into Neoforma, which will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Global Healthcare upon the closing of the transaction. Neoforma will also cease to be a public company.
• Services company EnergySolutions completed an acquisition of Arlington, Virginia-based BNG America, a subsidiary of the British Nuclear Group, on February 27. Among other things, the deal gives Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions the North American rights to reprocessing technology currently used in Great Britain