Acquisitions

Quiksilver Inc. caught a monstrous wave Monday as Wall Street bet that the Orange County surf wear company could get snapped up by sportswear giant Nike Inc. Shares of Quiksilver jumped more than 46%. Although a deal would bolster Nike's position as the world's leading athletic brand, for Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver it would be an abrupt shift that probably would have been avoidable in a better economy, analysts said.

Giant home builder Pulte Homes Inc. agreed Wednesday to buy rival Centex Corp. for $1.3 billion in a move that could spur more mergers in an industry decimated by the housing slump and the reeling overall economy. The stock transaction would make Pulte the biggest home builder in the country with a presence in more than half the states, including Dallas-based Centex's sizable land holdings in Texas and the Carolinas.

Sprint Nextel Corp. said Tuesday that it was buying Virgin Mobile USA Inc. for $483 million, further narrowing the range of consumer choices for prepaid cellphone service. Sprint said it would pay $5.50 for each Virgin Mobile share and assume up to $205 million in debt. Payment will be mostly in Sprint shares. The Overland Park, Kan., company already owns 13.1% of Virgin Mobile, which operates its cellphone service over Sprint's network.

Warner Bros. has emerged as the only bidder for Midway Games Inc., all but assuring that it will take control of the bankrupt video game publisher previously owned by Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone and become a major force in the video game industry. Midway had hoped that the film studio's $33-million offer, made in late May, would spark a bidding war that would boost its price.

Big Pharma got bigger on Monday with Merck Co.'s announcement that it would acquire rival Schering-Plough Corp. in a cash-and-stock transaction worth $41.1 billion. And the deal is being made easier by U.S. taxpayers. Faced with tough competition from generics, fewer potential blockbuster drugs in development and the prospect of a government overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, drug makers are consolidating. In January, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer Inc.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. said Friday that it would add higher-margin medical devices to its healthcare unit by purchasing healthcare company I-Flow Corp. of Lake Forest for about $276 million. Kimberly-Clark, maker of Huggies diapers and Kleenex tissues, will start a tender offer to buy all of I-Flow's outstanding stock at $12.65 per share. The per share price represents an 8% premium to I-Flow's Thursday closing price of $11.76. "I-Flow will increase our medical device sales by more than 50%, add an innovative and successful technology to our growing portfolio of pain management and surgical solution products, and strengthen the depth and breadth of our sales force," Joanne Bauer, president of Kimberly-Clark Health Care, said in a statement.

Private investors closed a deal Friday to buy Pasadena's IndyMac Bank from regulators, promising to make the 33-branch thrift a "healthy banking institution" again. How exactly do they plan to accomplish that? So far, no one's saying. IndyMac collapsed July 11, 2008, the victim of an ill-fated strategy of using high-interest deposits to fund mortgage loans to borrowers who often weren't asked to document their earnings or assets.

Former Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain on Monday defended the acquisition of the brokerage by Bank of America Corp., saying the bank knew of the company's losses and payment of bonuses before the purchase closed. Thain also said he planned to reimburse Bank of America for a $1.2-million renovation of his office a year ago, saying in an interview with CNBC that "it is clear to me in today's world that it was a mistake." "I apologize for spending that money . . . .

In a surprise move, Lionsgate Entertainment Corp. agreed Monday to buy TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com for $255 million, torpedoing a deal announced just over two weeks ago with media entrepreneur Allen Shapiro and a private equity unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. The purchase from Macrovision Solutions Corp. is expected to significantly expand Lionsgate's cable holdings and reach, giving the Santa Monica studio one of the most widely distributed cable networks in the United States.

Social-networking website Facebook Inc. acquired Parakey Inc., a company run by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, founders of the Web browser Mozilla Firefox. Parakey is the first acquisition for closely held Palo Alto-based Facebook. Financial terms weren't disclosed. Ross and Hewitt are joining Facebook's development team to work on its website.