Acquisitions

Last week, Warren Buffett moved to save Media General, paying $142 million to buy 63 of its struggling newspapers. The move helps backstop the newspaper industry, giving it breathing room to figure out a way to survive in the Internet age.

Diamond Foods is buying the Pringles brand of chips from Procter & Gamble for $1.5 billion. The deal is the latest -- and biggest -- of a stack of acquisitions for the maker of Emerald nuts and Pop Secret popcorn, making Diamond to the No. 2 snack company after PepsiCo's Frito-Lay.

GSI Commerce, which operates websites for big retailers such as Toys R Us and Bath and Body Works, is now selling itself. Web marketplace eBay says its buying GSI for a cool $2.4 billion.

Mergers and acquisitions are becoming ever more popular, with activity up 24% in the first two months of this year -- after already growing 23% in 2010. Here's how your portfolio can benefit from this trend.

Warren Buffett recently said he was anxious to pull the trigger on another large deal. Sheldon Liber, who correctly predicted some of Buffett's earlier acquisitions, writes about which company Buffett could acquire next. You heard it here first.

Citigroup has foreclosed on U.K.-based record label EMI Group, taking it back from private-equity firm Terra Firma, which bought EMI from Citigroup for a whopping $4.7 billion in 2007.

The European Commission on Wednesday approved Intel's $7.68 billion acquisition of security-software company McAfee. Regulators had been concerned that the deal would exclude competing software from working with Intel processors, but Intel agreed to maintain interoperability.

Companies such as Duke Energy and DuPont are off and running with megamergers early this year. Even Playboy is among the dealers. And market pros say the trend is far from over. Why are so many U.S. companies tying the knot? Fast growth is hard to come by in any other strategy.

Companies have record amounts of cash to spend: $1.9 trillion. How can they put it to the best use to keep stock markets booming?

Groupon has turned down Google's acquisition offer of roughly $6 billion. It might be holding out for more money, but columnist Alex Salkever thinks it's more likely to be aiming for a big IPO. Here's why he believes its offering could launch a whole new wave of Internet IPOs.