(Updates Applied Materials, Uralkaliy, Telefonica; Adds BlackBerry, Smithfield, Barrick Gold and others)
Sept 24 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Tuesday:
** Applied Materials Inc will buy rival Tokyo Electron Ltd in an all-stock deal valued at more than $9 billion, combining the No. 1 and No. 3 makers of chip-making gear as demand for their products slows and it gets tougher to turn a profit. The deal will create a new company valued at about $29 billion that would be 68 percent owned by Applied Materials shareholders, the companies said.
** Investor Prem Watsa, who has struck a tentative $4.7 billion deal to take smartphone maker BlackBerry Ltd private, is aggressively touting his group's Canadian status to avoid the government reviews of foreign takeovers that have plagued recent attempts to buy Canadian companies.
** Smithfield Foods Inc shareholders approved the pork giant's $4.7 billion sale to Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd in what is shaping up as the biggest acquisition of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm.
** UPM-Kymmene Corp and Stora Enso Oyj , the world's leading makers of printing and writing paper, are being driven towards a merger of their European units by a relentless fall in demand and prices in the digital era.
** The Warsaw bourse, Eastern Europe's largest equity market, aims to conclude talks on a tie-up with the Vienna stock exchange within months, the chief executive of its operator GPW said. State-controlled GPW said earlier this year it was in talks with the Vienna bourse operator that could lead to a merger.
** Barrick Gold Corp is in talks on further asset sales, with the focus on divesting smaller, higher-cost mines, Chief Executive Jamie Sokalsky told Reuters. Barrick, the world's largest gold producer, announced a deal last month to sell three of its high-cost mines in Australia for $300 million. The company is looking to improve returns in the face of weaker metal prices and ballooning costs.
** One of Boise Inc's largest shareholders doesn't plan to vote for the paper and packaging company's $1.28 billion takeover by rival Packaging Corp of America and said Boise should spin off its paper business instead.
** China acquired a 12.5 percent stake in Russian potash producer Uralkaliy OAO in a deal that could help Beijing secure stable supplies of the soil nutrient, put new pressure on prices and reduce the chances of a Russia-Belarus cartel being revived.
** Privately held U.S. power company Panda Power Funds has acquired a majority interest in a planned 750-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant in Loudoun County, Virginia, Panda said.
** Britain's Labour Party will seek to halt the privatization of the Royal Mail postal service by calling a last-minute parliamentary debate on the issue, the party's postal spokesman told Reuters.
** Russia's state-run oil company Rosneft is acquiring Enel SpA's indirect stake in Russian gas producer SeverEnergia, valued at $1.8 billion. Rosneft said the deal to buy Enel's 40 percent stake in Arctic Russia B.V. would lead to Rosneft's indirect ownership of a 19.6 percent stake in SeverEnergia, a joint gas production venture with assets in Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region in Northern Russia.
** Spanish telecoms group Telefonica SA has struck a deal to gradually secure control of Telecom Italia SpA and its lucrative south American business without having to launch a full takeover bid. The multi-part 860 million euro ($1.16 billion) cash-and-shares deal secured on Tuesday will allow Telefonica to raise its stake in Telco, the holding company controlling about 22 percent of Telecom Italia, allowing Telco's other investors, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, Generali and Mediobanca to eventually bow out.
Brazil's telecom regulator Anatel would demand that Telecom Italia sell its Brazilian mobile operator affiliate TIM Participacoes SA if Spanish group Telefonica SA acquired 100 pct of Telco, the controlling shareholder in Telecom Italia, a source at Anatel told Reuters.
** San Miguel Corp is in talks with holding firm JG Summit Holdings Inc to sell a stake in power firm Manila Electric Co, San Miguel President Ramon Ang said. He declined to specify the size of the stake but San Miguel owns 27.1 percent of the Manila-listed power retailer.
** South Korea's state-run Korea National Oil Corp said it is considering selling "non-core parts" of its loss-making Canadian energy subsidiary Harvest Operations and reviewing other overseas assets for potential sale of some of their parts.
** Sweden is to sell its remaining 7 percent stake in Nordea Bank AB, the Nordic region's biggest bank, its second sale of Nordea shares this year and giving the centre-right ruling coalition some fiscal room for maneuver ahead of next year's general election.
** KKR & Co LP is leading a joint venture with China Modern Dairy Holdings Ltd and a Chinese private equity firm that will invest $140 million in two large dairy farms to help meet rising domestic demand for premium milk products. Modern Dairy, China Mengniu Dairy Co Ltd and Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co Ltd are among the Chinese companies expected to eventually hold a dominant share of the milk industry. KKR will hold 61.5 percent of the venture, while CDH will own 20.5 percent and Modern Dairy 18 percent, the companies said in a statement.
** Private equity firms KKR & Co LP and Sycamore Partners are aiming to buy retailer Jones Group Inc as soon as this week, The New York Post reported, citing sources. The private equity firms want to put an end to an auction for the fashion and footwear company, which owns retail chains Nine West and Jones New York, run by Citigroup Inc.
** Seven Convenience Bhd, a 7-Eleven convenience store chain operator in Malaysia, is offering up to 530.33 million shares in an initial pubic offering that could be worth about 700 million ringgit ($218.8 million), a draft prospectus showed.
** French drugmaker Servier has offered to buy the shares in Hungarian pharmaceuticals maker Egis it does not already own in a deal worth 107 billion forints ($482.8 million). Egis said that a Servier's Arts et Techniques du Progres unit currently holds 51 percent of Egis shares. Servier is offering 28,000 forints ($130) per share, a 33 percent premium to Egis's closing share price on Monday.
** The main owners of indebted Russian drugstore company Pharmacy Chain 36.6 plan to sell down their stakes, business daily Kommersant reported. Artyom Bektemirov and Sergei Krivosheev will sell a stake of around 30 percent in the chain to banker Roman Avdeev. Bektemirov and Krivosheev will retain between 5 and 10 percent of the pharmacy chain's shares in total, while Avdeev will become its biggest shareholder.
** Belgian financial services group KBC has agreed the sale of German unit KBC Deutschland, one of the final divestment needed to satisfy EU regulators after it received state aid during the financial crisis. KBC said it had agreed to sell the business to several investors including affiliates of Teacher Retirement System of Texas, Apollo Global Management, LLC, Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Inc. and Grovepoint Capital LLP.
** Portugal's fourth-largest listed bank, Banif, plans to sell its Brazilian subsidiary by the end of this year, a bank spokesman said. He said the Brazilian unit has 600 million euros in assets after the Portuguese bank has written off 200 million euros in impairments there, and a work force of 150 people.
** India's Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, which has been grounded for almost a year for want of cash, is in talks with a foreign investor for a potential stake sale, Chairman Vijay Mallya said, without naming any investor.
** German real estate company Patrizia Immobilien said late on Monday that it agreed to buy 36 office buildings valued at about 800 million euros ($1.1 billion) on behalf of a consortium of investors. Patrizia will pass along the 450,000 square meters of office space it will acquire from Austrian real estate group CA Immo to a real estate fund held by a consortium of institutional investors based in German-speaking countries.
** Chrysler Group LLC filed paperwork on Monday for an initial public offering, a move that could delay Fiat SpA's efforts to take full ownership of the U.S. automaker while enhancing the value of the stake held by a union trust fund. The IPO of up to $100 million comes over the strenuous objections of Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, who wants to merge Fiat and Chrysler and make the world's seventh-largest automaker, Chrysler said in a securities filing.
** Entergy Corp resubmitted a plan to Texas regulators on Monday, proposing to transfer its electric transmission assets to ITC Holdings. Last month, the $1.78 billion proposal faced certain rejection by the Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) and was withdrawn by Entergy Texas and ITC officials. The transaction is a spin-off and merger of Entergy's 15,400-mile transmission network serving parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
** Greenway Medical Technologies Inc has agreed to be taken private by Vista Equity Partners for $644 million, less than two years after the medical software provider debuted on the U.S. stock market.
** Sequenom Inc, a maker of diagnostic tests, said it is exploring a full range of strategic options for its genetic analysis business. The genetic analysis segment, which conducts research into genetic structures to explore better ways of treating diseases, is one of the two business segments of Sequenom. ($1 = 0.74 euros) ($1 = 221.60 Hungarian forints) ($1 = 3.19 Malaysian ringgits) (Compiled by Aby Jose Koilparambil)